Albums of the Decade

New Solange (which has really grown on me) sounds so much like Endless really. But yeah, I think those two albums will cast a really long shadow. At least once every few days a random bit of Blonde just gets stuck in my head without warning.

The Lovebox show (that a lot of people hated) really took that album to another level for me too.

Just a bit obsessed with it still tbh.

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Wish I’d been at lovebox. My mate was there and said it captured the intimacy of the album and went beyond it. (Half his mates went home halfway through)…

I saw him touring channel orange which I’m grateful for but Blonde is something very special indeed and I neeeearly let it pass me by. “Sounds like a bunch of demos” etc. I cannot get enough now and play it pretty much every week. Haven’t done my list yet but will be up there with kaputt, mbdtf, tpab and take me apart.

New album please frank.

It’s bloody easy to think there’s not much going on on it, glad you came back for another go.

Really enjoyed reading that (though you wonder if DB would hate it :D)

It’s a difficult record to get hold of - I feel I would have persevered more with it at the time had it been a straightforward physical release. I loved Channel Orange and was looking forward to a new record but all the shenanigans surrounding the release put me off a bit and the album was one of many that I find hard to stick with when there is only a stream available.

It repays repeated listens though and it is a beautiful, subtle piece of work.

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Yeah, you definitely have to ‘let it in’ I guess. I didn’t warm to it instantly. Downloaded it pissed that Saturday night & was initially really annoyed. Thought I wanted another Channel Orange but ultimately really glad that’s not what we got.

No idea at all what he’ll do next.

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Tbf I think he probably loves people trying to analyse his stuff. Saw him at Field Day once & still to this day have no idea if he was actually on stage. Properly contrary, which is always a win for me…

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80% of the people were waiting for Pyramids to lose their shit, and it just never came. It’s a major festival, I can see why people got annoyed. But I found the whole thing so brave & strange. Was so low key it was like you were imagining it. Such a weird sensation. Not the greatest gig ever, but a bit like the album it really stuck with me, think about it often.

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Oh - and Take Me Apart, wow. Didn’t make my list, quite (partly because I went for Cut 4 Me) but no doubt it’ll have crept up when I do it for real. Listen to it often, such a phenomenally underrated record.

Still sounds like it’s from the future and it has that narrative running through it to that makes it even more compelling. She is such a powerful singer as well, she can do brute force then something like this:

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I think it’s amazing that I had this almost exact thought, about it sounding unfinished or tossed off. And yet it’s main strength for me now is the layers and depth and intricacy of it. Not sure I’ve ever been so wrong about an album before.

Also I never got into Channel Orange (though I’m going to have another go this week) so I wonder if that made it easier for me to enjoy it when that eventually happened, since I wasn’t expecting a particular sound from him. It’s always interesting to see which albums are the ones that made people finally “get” an artist.

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It’s hard to explain but I feel really quite dislocated by the way life works these days and it seems to reflect that sensation perfectly, the sparseness of it is definitely a strength. I guess that type of aesthetic wouldn’t be half as meaningful if it didn’t have songs as good as Self Control, White Ferrari… yeah that list could be 15 songs long but you know what I mean.

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Loving all this Frank chat. Blonde has grown and grown on me - weirdly I think it has made Orange sound almost stiff and formal by comparison. Amazing respect to Frank for somehow loosening up his song writing yet making it way more layered and resonant (IMO). A brave thing to make your music intentionally less Hitty while breaking away from the majors. The man’s a genius.

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First version of mine, but will most likely change around.

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How do you make these lovely lists? Loving the Boy Azooga inclusion by the way

Yeah there’s definitely something of that in it for me too. Became a Dad two months after it came out, so your life obviously starts to change & that happened whilst I was listening to this album pretty much constantly.

My top 2 (by a mile too) are pretty much exact opposites of each other. MBDTF is such a gluttonous record, Blonde (despite the fact there’s quite a lot going on in some songs) is so stripped back it’s barely there sometimes. The lack of bass makes it feel really ethereal. What connects them both is that they really are products of this decade, how all this access to stuff all the time & constant connectivity has changed the way we consume & the effect that’s had on life & mental health & all those things. MBDTF is Kanye assembling everything to try & make the greatest thing ever. Blonde is Frank taking the same stuff & stripping it right back, decluttering it all.

Clumsily worded, but you get my point.

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Pretty perfectly worded tbh…

Have really enjoyed this Frank/Kelela chat.

I think my experience of Blonde has been a bit different though. It really hit my like a train. The production and the shift in sound from ChannelORANGE completely undid me. (Interpolating Elliott Smith and one of my favourite Beatles songs certainly helped too.) Personally felt that CO was pretty patchy. When it was good it was absolutely stunning but there were too many tracks that I just skipped. I think the album from my list that really did the biggest about turn was Art Angels. I really didn’t get/enjoy that when it was first released. Came back a year later and barely listened to anything else for weeks.

Interesting that someone mentioned Blonde being a clear influence on the latest Solange record. I really, really dislike it. It’s such a disappointment after A Seat at the Table. Still, i’m hoping that I’ll revisit it at some point in the future and see something different in it. :crossed_fingers:

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Picked up Joanna Newsom’s Divers last weekend off the back of this thead. Was going at a good price second hand in a record shop in Edinburgh. Very glad I did, it’s excellent. Unsure if it’ll make its way onto the decade list, needs some more deep dives.

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Boom boom!

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Best Coast - Crazy For You
Eluvium - Similes
Bon Iver - Bon Iver
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Fucked Up - David Comes to Life
Mates of State - Mountaintops
Vaccines - What Did You Expect
Best Coast - The Only Place
Baroness - Yellow & Green
Cloud Nothings - Attack on Memory
Japandroids - Celebration Rock
Menzingers - On the Impossible Past
Trail of Dead - Lost Songs
Metz - Metz
Deafheaven - Sunbather
Los Campesinos - No Blues
Cheatahs - Cheatahs
Future Islands - Singles
Joyce Manor - Never Hungover Again
Sun Kil Moon - Benji
Best Coast - California Nights
Cheatahs - Mythologies
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Girl Band - Holding Hands with Jamie
Spectres - Dying
Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell
Turnstile - Nonstop Feeling
Title Fight - Hyperview
Bon Iver - 22, A Million
Idles - Brutalism
Menzingers - After the Party
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
Fucked Up - Dose Your Dreams
Idles - Joy As An Act of Resistance
Turnstile - Time & Space
Drug Church - Cheer
Fontaines DC - Dogrel

Bands with several releases I can’t decide between, or just do them all:
Hotelier
Converge
Every Time I Die
Basement
Future of the Left

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