Robyn dancing on my own dubstep deadmau5 remix
55 expands their palette, with mostly satisfying results. One can usually guess what they’re going to get from The Knocks, and chances are it’ll be at the very least fine: a blend of disco and electro, with basslines pushed to the forefront and grooves snapped to an amiable tempo. But Gwen being Gwen, we get an album whose first half is compelling and whose second is repellent. Handed to another artist, we probably could have gotten a product that upholds the standard of those first five songs. There are so many embarrassing land mines here that I won’t go into detail, but it’s probably worth nothing that the Japanese deluxe edition features a song called “War Paint,” which goes down about as well as you’d expect a Gwen Stefani song called “War Paint” to (hint: the chorus goes, “I’m going tribal on ya!”).
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Sure, “Hollaback Girl” is batshit enough that it still holds up today, and I’m sure Gwen wants to recapture that lightning yet I have no idea why she continually insists on not just rapping but rapping like a cartoon duck. The first five songs are tight, radio-ready pop, the most consistent streak for Stefani in probably ever: we get big choruses, dark, filtered breakdowns, fizzy ska-pop (“Where Would I Be”), disco sugar (“Make Me Like You”) and the gorgeous, delicate “Truth.” But then we get the soppy “Used to Love You,” followed by “Send Me a Picture,” and then… the album takes a huge dive. Stefani’s usual genre splatter is here, but it’s fortunately evened out with the help of current pop writer elite Justin Tranter and Julia Michaels, who co-wrote the entire standard edition of Truth. It’s a strong theme for what starts out as a very strong album. Gwen’s smitten, head-over-heels, sparkle-eyed, but so often her lyrics are tinged with anxiety, self-doubt, and fear (“put me out of my misery” “now you got me missing you” “thank you for saving me, I can’t believe it” “I’d be a stupid girl to let it go”). Tabloid headlines aside, the most endearing aspect of Truth is how it navigates the space between breakup and new love. Or maybe that’s just because “Send Me a Picture” is pretty decent if you can ignore that it’s about Gwen and Blake Shelton sexting. Gwen Stefani, This Is What the Truth Feels Likeįor all the candor Gwen boasted in this album’s PR cycle, This Is What the Truth Feels Like works best when divorced from the real-world context that inspired it. Mat Zo’s a talented producer and sound designer, still wielding the bitcrushed, soulful chords that have been his trademark, and there’s a handful of songs to revisit – Sinead Egan’s fine turn on the skronking “The Enemy,” interesting takes on filter house like “Soul Food,” or the festival-ready electro of “Lights Out.” But Self Assemble feels like it’s made up of Lego blocks that, though each solid on their own, don’t fit, and when put together make up a confusing whole.
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Which makes Self Assemble a tough listen, especially when tracks like “Killing Time,” a breezy 2-step number, sit so close to the out-of-nowhere VIP for “Ruffneck Bad Boy,” a mess of brostep that comes off dated in 2016. It’s structured like a long-form electronic dance album, with a dramatic intro (the pitchbend-happy “Order Out of Chaos”), ambient interludes, and genre hopscotch, but it’s only forty-two minutes.
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On Self Assemble, Matan Zohar dives further into experimentation than his debut Damage Control, resulting in a somewhat perplexing, intermittently enjoyable album. It was a prescient move for both, as they sidestepped the EDM craze that other bigwigs like Tiesto and Armin van Buuren were targeting (to varying success) in favor of cooler, indie-skewing synthpop. Mat Zo and Porter Robinson’s lovely 2012 collab “Easy” foreshadowed a stylistic shift for both of the young producers, Robinson from heavy electro and Zo from trance. It’s never fun when an act you used to love slips further away from your liking, but they’ve hit a wall. But there’s not much else I enjoy: actually-was-the-lead single “Heart is Full” is overcooked, a lumbering mess of Autotune and soul samples, and the Charli XCX feature is disappointing. Pleasant exceptions are the catchy, shoulda-been-the-lead single “The Heart of Me” and “I Feel the Weight,” which is pure, robotized wistfulness. Their formula is intact, but the songs are drab. III takes a less clear direction: a little bit soul, a little bit hip hop, a little bit robopop, a little bit of everything. Happy to You went darker, more experimental. It worked on their debut, which boasted undeniable singles like “Sylvia” and “Animals” as well as moody synthpop. I like the idea of Bloodshy & Avant, some of pop’s quirkiest producers creating indie-cool music with Andrew Wyatt’s vamping over the top, often pitch-shifted to all hell. More and more, I find myself preferring the idea of Miike Snow than the actual result.
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These are some albums I listened to in March.