A record that mightāve been amazing if the band had only bothered to write some actual songs.
Always remember reading that about Kid A. Itās defo played out to make comparisons between that record and any ārock artist incorporates electronic soundsā LP but 22, a Million has more genuine parallels than most, though itās not a record that by any means would necessarily appeal to fans of that album or vice versa. Bonny olāBear gets tired of the boundaries of folk music and, rather than turning to an established underground producer to revamp his sound (e.g. Anohni/HudMo, Bjork/Arca etc.) builds a sound for himself that deconstructs the music he was making before and stiches the pieces together with āexperimentalā (primarily electronic and R&B) music in a pretty seemless fashion.
I get why people donāt like it. Itās not really got great traditional āsongsā or āsongwritingā; again it sounds like heās bored of making those and wanting to dismantle that music to come up with something less traditional. Itās also not doing anything remarkably new production-wise on the surface - know-it-all music geeks said the same about Kid A. But Bon Iver hit number 2 on the Billboard 100 with the last album and has gradually picked up a large Mumford-lovinā-listens-to-2-new-albums-a-year audience with For Emma. Bits of the album will probably push a lot of casual music fans out of their comfort zones and down a rabbit hole of great modern music. I just like the way it sounds and what heās put together, but I can understand why critics are jumping on it too.
