Cordavision Music Reviews

Honestly, if you’re heart is quite literally glowing, you might have to see a doctor. Okay, hi. It’s been a hot minute. I’m gonna be more consistent with the reviews and do a little catch-up with some other albums I’ve heard, but this is one I’ve sat on for a while. Weyes Blood has been an artist that I’ve fallen in love with. I know I’m not the only one thinking that her last album, 2019’s Titanic Rising , is probably a contender for the best indie rock album of the 2010s. I think it’s a landmark album that set the bar for indie rock/singer-songwriter albums for this decade. Now, we have something that could match the quality of that: Weyes Blood’s next album. And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow dropped last month, and I’ve had a good amount of time to sit on it. Let’s get into how I felt about it. The reason why I’ve had to take some time with this project is because I’ve had a hard time putting to words just how nice this is to listen to. This has a nostalgic, old school feeling that...

Shoutout Hivemind. Right off the bat, I’ll say that I didn’t expect this from Quadeca. The section of YouTuber-turned-musicians that are on my radar are pretty big, especially since I upload on YouTube. Of course, there’s Joji who successfully made the jump, but there are other YouTubers that happen to make music like KSI that really just don’t hit hard to me. Quadeca’s last album, From Me To You , really set up some potential for Quadeca to be a pretty successful YouTuber-to-rapper jump and I still enjoy that project today. His latest release, I Didn’t Mean To Haunt You , leans into a much more experimental and ambitious project. I plan to watch the accompanying visual album too, but it’s just been busy. So, let’s just get into it. So, if I didn’t make it obvious, this project is a whole different beast compared to the other Quadeca projects I’ve heard. This is much more of an art pop album with some alternative R&B, experimental rap, and even a little tinge of industrial thrown i...

No, Mr. John Misty, get away from the lady in the radiator!! It’s interesting to see the discourse around Josh Tillman, known professionally as Father John Misty. It’s not that he’s a piece of shit person or anything, it all revolves around the music. I know people that adore his music. I know people that just despise his music. I really don’t know what it is, mainly because I’m just so divided on him. Yes, he’s a very talented musician who deserves to get critical acclaim, but in most of the music, he just comes off as a pretentious douche. Tillman has come out and said that FJM is a character and doesn’t reflect himself, but I can’t help but feel put off by it. Maybe that’s why his last album, 2018’s God’s Favorite Customer , worked so well with me. It was stripping back that pretentiousness and looking under the microscope of Father John Misty, like everything was planned. I’m hoping the same with Chloë and the Next 20th Century , with some fantastic art direction all around. Let’s ...

No, let the plane out of the bag, they’re gonna suffocate in there!! At the time of writing this, today is the first anniversary of British post-punk outfit Black Country, New Road’s magnificent debut album, For the first time . For context, that was one of the first albums I officially gave a perfect score, and honestly, it’s stayed that way ever since. I’ve avoided the singles for this album successfully and I haven’t even heard the leaked live performances because I’m simply that excited for this. I did get a little scared about this just before its release. The frontman of the group, Isaac Wood, left the group due to mental health reasons and cancelled the international tour they were set to embark on. Obviously, mental health is a huge issue and I respect the choice Wood made with his group. However, Wood is the vocalist of the group and a very dynamic performer. It wouldn’t affect this album, but what about their future? Either way, Ants From Up There is finally here. Let’s get ...

Nothing like a good January ambient album, am I right? I’m sure you haven’t heard the name Mydreamfever before, but this isn’t the first time I’ve covered them. He’s more popular under the name Parannoul, who made it onto my radar last year with two incredible albums: To See the Next Part of the Dream and a split album with Asian Glow and sonhos tomam conta Downfall of the Neon Youth , the latter garnering a perfect score when it dropped this past October. Now, the first album under the Mydreamfever name, he sets out to create something brand new and separate from Parannoul: an ambient album titled Rough and Beautiful Place . Let’s get into it. Something that people might not know about me is that I’m a sucker for a good ambient album. I typically don’t go back to them on my own time, but I do like to appreciate what I hear in music in general. When it comes to that, I absolutely adore this album. The piano-driven tracks, most if not all of them, are fantastic, and the ambient landsca...

Cache Saturday is a series of unranked reviews where I’m gonna catch up on albums I’ve listened to, whether it’s for the first time or not. I’ll also cover new albums I’ve missed from earlier or were cut from my schedule. Also, they’ll all be done in one paragraph. This week’s entry is a side project from Weezer, everyone’s favorite band (100% accurate), OK Human . I’m mainly doing this for a friend of mine because I had actually skipped this album since it was released all the way back in January of this year. Along with that, Van Weezer is one of the worst albums of the year, so it made me push back listening to this album. After finally listening to this, I can say that I’m not sure why I doubted this. This album is great, actually. What I enjoy about it the most is the production. I know that an issue on some albums has been overproduction, but I don’t think it’s an issue here. It sounds great here and it’s probably one of the best-produced albums of 2021. Even with the sometimes ...

You know what? I might buy this on vinyl for the cover alone. Damon Albarn is a musician I’ve admired for a long time now. He ended up being a gateway to some of my favorite artists ever because of Gorillaz and I’ve always liked his work for Blur, but he hasn’t truly had much of a solo career. He’s released one solo album, 2014’s Everyday Robots, and he confirmed that he has another Gorillaz album planned for some time next year. In the meantime, he’s recorded The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows , announced back in 2019 as a tribute to Iceland. I’ve been excited for this for a while now, so let’s not waste time and get into it. Honestly, there was one album that came to mind when listening to it, and that’s David Bowie’s final album, Blackstar . This album has the oddball, jazzy tone that made Blackstar so beloved and I’m finally glad that there’s a similar album to that. I try not to use direct comparisons like that, but I feel that this was too big to ignore. The pro...

More like GOODGOODNOTBAD. Man, I’ve really been trying to get into modern jazz lately. An album I’ve been listening to a lot recently when it comes to 2021 jazz is Promises , the new album from Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders. It’s definitely growing into an all-time favorite for me in the genre, but there might be some competition now. I don’t know anything about BADBADNOTGOOD, but after singing the praises of Promises , I got recommended that I listen to this when it dropped. Let’s get into Talk Memory and see how it is. Throughout this album, I’ve really enjoyed how this quartet combines all of the different types of jazz and instrumental hip-hop. Where I think this album stands out the most is its production. I feel like it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. Self-production is something that’s always so impressive to me, and there are plenty of artists that don’t get enough credit for it. BADBADNOTGOOD entirely produced this album, like most of their own work, and it...

I cannot express enough how terrifying this woman is to me. For those that don’t know, that is a positive. Kristin Hayter, known professionally as Lingua Ignota, is someone I’ve had trouble explaining why she’s one of my favorite artists. It’s not every day that your parents ask you what you’re listening to and you answer with “DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR” or All Bitches Die , the name of her breakout album. Hell, I actually credit her for why I decided I wanted to write about music like this. Her last album, the mind-blowing and all-too-real CALIGULA , is a devastating look into abuse and misogyny. In her own words, she stated that CALIGULA takes the listener “through a cycle of abuse," along with looking at "abusive power, madness, depravity, narcissism” that are prevalent in politics and communities alike. I could write a college paper on how visceral CALIGULA is just from Hayter’s lyrics alone, but now, we look to the future. Her newest release, Sinner Get Ready , is here an...