[moop]

I think this is his strongest solo outing to date outside of DT. The only song not clicking with me is CSRS...something about the main synth just sounds so basic. I love the flute sounds at the end though!

This just feels like Avey is on a higher level in terms of songwriting, production, and sounds. I love it so much!

[rohcti]

Definitely his best since Eucalyptus

[dio]

Reset is a dlc pack of Mario kart circuits/tracks. This is a dialogue heavy mystery/slice of life indie title with rhythm game aspects


I really like the "you can beat it, you can beat the thing that eats you.... this bad world does need you". What do yal even think is the chorus to Darlings? It keep growing. Also "I've been tryna write I song that can't ignore you" descending melody stuck in my head. Its a nocturnal earworm

[OliverTwist606]

Why has Pitchfork not reviewed this album yet?

[dio]

Theyd probably give it a 7 any, who cares

[jerry wonder]

man, The Musical is great great song

[foxtrot]

Invisible Darlings and The Musical get a bad wrap. Both so full of melody, heart-warming messages and beautiful sounds.

[nothingmaster]

the musical is crazy rhythmic candy. a delicious arrangement

[jerry wonder]

foxtrot wrote:

Invisible Darlings and The Musical get a bad wrap. Both so full of melody, heart-warming messages and beautiful sounds.

these two are my favorite!

the rest are a bit meandering and repetitive for me--I like it when Avey writes pop songs

[Jam]

jerry wonder wrote:

the rest are a bit meandering and repetitive for me

Crazy because this is how I feel about the Musical. Feels so hollow to me. Melodically and lyrically I just feel nothing, and it goes about 3x longer than it feels like it should. The slowed down final verse just feels trite to me and like .. padding? (I guess anything that makes a song I don't like go longer feels like padding) and it calls more attention to the talk-sing style of lyrical delivery on this song which i do not feel suits Avey at all.

Not to come down too hard on this song or those who dig it—wish I did—it just feels completely out of step with the rest of the record. I'm surprised I feel this strongly about it too because I liked it on first listen.

Invisible Darlings rocks though and is a welcome(-ing) opener.

[dio]

Man I love that speak-singing (melodic rapping!?) he does on Musical... that style def suits Avey when the lyrics are this thought out. Shit's honestly really charming, I love how far he pushed the concept of that song (a song kinda about songs and singing and shit) and its so articulate while also just feeling good rhythmically.

First three songs really take you by the hand with some kinda older Avey styles and then you get to Hey Bog and its like he's saying, don't worry, I'm gonna give you something kinda new and spacier, cuz I don't fuck around.

(Hey Bog does remind me of Oliver Twist, but those two songs are so singular for Avey, and Burial-esque, it feels like un-mined territory for Avey).

Also I realized an influence I'm hearing i couldn't articulate and its Fennesz. Idk if that's how Avey thinks about it, but a lot of the sound design on Lips and then Neurons and sooort of Cloud give me Fennesz vibes. Love that. Also, Cloud is kind of related to Jerome???

[Jam]

I'm very glad others feel like he pulled it off! I hope he tries it again in a different context and it clicks for me because it's a really intriguing idea.

More so I need a doubling down on the ideas in the final four tracks, plenty of space and looooots of texture. Great call on the Fennesz connection. In a similar vein it sometimes feels like Tim Hecker.

[unrecordednight]

something i've been thinking about is how our perception of new AC releases is affected by how incredible so much of their catalog is. so much of it is so special that when a new release is just 'very good' it feels like it fell short even tho it's still very good stuff in and of itself. but i feel like i have to stop and appreciate that not every song is meant to be top tier AC magic and accept that some releases are just gonna be a collection of decent songs

the back half of this album is quite good, i had a similar kind of response to this record that stan did initially but leaving it on repeat i've come to quite enjoy a good amount of it. it's not making me have a deeply emotional response like a lot of their stuff has, but i've been vibing to a lot of the catchiest bits, and that can be enough sometimes, not every song they write is gonna be mindblowing. they've just managed to put out so much good stuff that we hope every release is gonna be on that level but if i had to choose between them not releasing 2nd tier material and only releasing their absolute best, or putting out music consistently like they have been, i'm sure we'd all still go for the latter.

case in point, i remember avey said he wasn't even planning on releasing the eucalyptus material, but deakin told him it was good stuff and encouraged him to put it out, otherwise he wouldn't have. i don't think eucalyptus is feels/sung tongs/sj/mpp tier, but i've enjoyed that album a lot and i'm happy they put it out

[Fovrodi]

I don’t think people are giving enough credit to the New Psycho actives informing some of the style here

[andthephantom]

dio wrote:

Theyd probably give it a 7 any, who cares

Not quite. Geesh. Wish they hadn’t even bothered.

[Avey Tane]

Neurons sounds like lorde

Cloud Stop Rest Start sounds like On a Highway

[Tropic]

Cringing hard at the fork review, sheesh. Gets lyrics totally wrong then slates them for being nonsensical. Dave has a lisp?

[rohcti]

Spoiler: show

At 43, his voice has grown huskier and deeper, and he’s developed a lisp that’s also audible on Time Skiffs.

...

7s does not benefit from reading the lyrics, which are crammed with grammatically bizarre turns of phrase (“Your doesn’t seek me out from the fishes/I relish the homemade cast I’ll in meantime”) and pseudo-deep platitudes that make “Stairway to Heaven” sound profound (“Too often we are villains and our heroes/Serve ourselves and then we dig ourselves a fresh tune”).

I can't believe that this constitutes professional journalism. They devote like half the review to a discussion about the lyrics and can't even get the lyrics right, even after talking about reading the lyrics lol. Guess they got it from one of those user-generated things and decided to use that?

[Tropic]

rohcti wrote:

Guess they got it from one of those user-generated things and decided to use that?

Yeah that's what I figured. Gutter journalism

[Stories and Games]

admittedly embarrassing to get the lyrics wrong for a release that has official lyrics, but also i think the point being made is honestly pretty spot on. was surprised at how positive the review was lol, the way y'all were talking about it made it sound like it was a 4.3 or something.

also about dave's new "lisp"... the reviewer is wrong about the cause, but the thing he's noticing is very real: avey's S's and T's are bizarrely muted on the past couple records he's sung on, along with his voice just sounding really washed out in general. i have a strong hunch that, without a separate producer to help oversee things in ac's post-covid home recording era, avey is recording his vocals with an overzealous low-pass filter applied, and there's nothing the mixing engineer can really do to fix that. i know ppl have qualms about the way time skiffs was mixed, but there is simply no way marta salogni independently decided that "and the minutes can't make up their minds" should sound like "and the minith can make up air mine." if i hadn't been listening to the boots all along i also probably would have thought he'd developed a slight lisp, especially because he's the only singer on the record who sounds like that

[denjanenna]

missed an opportunity to give it a 7 or 7.7

[dio]

Tropic wrote:

Cringing hard at the fork review, sheesh. Gets lyrics totally wrong then slates them for being nonsensical. Dave has a lisp?

This is pretty fucking crazy honestly. Like sure on one hand, who gives a fuck. But like um. There are fully official lyrics, wtf? Seems like a site like p4k would have standards for that along the lines of: do not quote lyrics based off yr own interpretation ESPECIALLY if there are official ones. What in the actual fuck.

Who is Madelyne? This is a love record? Word??

Whatever. I am 30 years old, I do not have time to be mad at p4k but holy balls.

[dio]

Why even refer to his gf at all honestly. By first name. Like it'd be one thing if she was also a public figure/musician to say her full name. But otherwise like. How do you even know her fucking name and why mention it. Idk, I emailed their corrections contact lol

[denjanenna]

The press release for the album mentioned the girlfriend by name for whatever reason

[Tropic]

Ya that's his gf but I have no idea why she was mentioned.

That's pretty interesting S&G

What's most insane to me is the misquoted lyrics are some of the easiest to parse on the record. Almost zero ambiguity

[andthephantom]

I’d be happy going the rest of my life without a music critic doing lyrics analysis. And that’s basically all we get in this review. Apart from a critique of hazy vocal delivery (fine - I don’t really disagree), there is almost no effort to describe what’s going on in these songs musically.

I mean, Sweepers Grin is easy to describe, easy to put into conversation with AC, and doing some clear and radical things to morph the album from one thing to another at its midpoint. That is the most obvious observation to make - but nothing here. Neurons and CSRS get no analysis. I’m fine with whatever score they give it, provided they justify that on the basis of the music. It would be easy to say CSRS isn’t successful …. Several on CA have said it. But this review doesn’t even begin to engage with what this album sounds like.

[r_o_s_s]

The dismissal of the lyrics as “bad nonsense” is extremely strange to me. A lot of the lyrics on 7s feel like they would be highly praised if they came earlier in Avey’s career - or even if they were performed by an artist that are hot right now like BCNR or black midi or whoever. To wave them off as “bad nonsense” just feels like a lack of effort on the journalist’s part. Even if the lyrics aren’t immediately coherent or clear, Avey’s choice of words are certainly really evocative and carry a lot of emotion. The vocal performances help a lot with that too.

[Fovrodi]

The lyrics feel as deeply personal as any he's put to song before

[dio]

denjanenna wrote:

The press release for the album mentioned the girlfriend by name for whatever reason

ok sure fair

but yeah otherwise this is bummer. I mean right off the bat "over-heels-in-love album" just seems... crazy? I guess Lips refers to um. Making out. And.....? Maybe Neurons? "We were under the highway and free" is such a lit lyric but i dont think its romantic per se lol.

Anyway, like I hear myself bitching about a p4k review, am self aware enough to know thats dumb and like who truly cares, Avey probably does not, but shits just kinda odd... It does seem like some of his better and more precise and specific lyrics in a while and so I think that's why it bothers me. Don't get the wrong message Avey, yr onto some good shit rn. Plz ignore p4k lol.

(also obligatory comment about "7 isnt even that bad" or whatever, its actually pretty normal for a solo outing, but idc about the score, I care about the content. and the LIES lol

[rohcti]

^agree. The score isn't bad, it's just some dude's opinion anyway. Doesn't matter in the least.

I wouldn't be surprised if they only listened to the first 3 songs and just a bit of CSRS. Because I don't know how you could get "head-over-heels love album" out of this. Not even the first 3 songs are completely about love anyway. I don't even disagree with most of the other points they're trying to make, I can see the arguments behind what they're saying. It's just an awful review that reads like a high schooler wrote it and had almost zero thought put into it. This is why I don't read this garbage

[Fovrodi]

Expect less of you're heroes

[dio]

p4k was my hero. relationship with hero over

[Collected Animals]

denjanenna wrote:

missed an opportunity to give it a 7 or 7.7

What score did they give it?

[jfw7]

looks like they corrected the lyrics inaccuracies at least

wrote:

Correction: Lyric quotes in this review have been updated.

[conswaygo]

Pitchfork introduced me to a lot of artists in the late 2000s and early 2010s but since then they've too often become our villains and our heroes. They save themselves and then dig themselves a fresh tomb.

[hedgecore]

I'm super upset

[rohcti]

conswaygo wrote:

Pitchfork introduced me to a lot of artists in the late 2000s and early 2010s but since then they've too often become our villains and our heroes. They save themselves and then dig themselves a fresh tomb.

[scrambledgreggs]

Pitchfork still introduces me to good stuff sometimes, the scores for it just usually fall between 7 and 8

[andthephantom]

scrambledgreggs wrote:

Pitchfork still introduces me to good stuff sometimes, the scores for it just usually fall between 7 and 8

Like this Model/Actriz album today . . . it's like they were trying to pull me back after dissing Avey yesterday. All the people hyping Gilla Band on here last year are gonna dig this one.

[cheyrou]

I hate pitchfork but I gotta admit when They’re right they’re right. This latest avey album str8up mid dog , avey broke ass needa put a mortgage on his house or sell some catalogue rights and go see the good doctor , and that’s doc luke , to get some of that career renaissance magic . Please 7S ? More like 7ASS