Rapid Review – 6/29/22

Angel Olsen – Big Time: As her sixth studio album, Olsen has really hit it out of the park with this release, being one of my favorite in a while. It’s an overall chill, relaxing, yet uplifting and feel-good type record with subtle organs backing everything in a pseudo-grand way but with a lot of folk influence, as well. Right Now has one of the most awe-inspiring instrumental endings led by a crushing guitar riff, which is then supported by trumpets and the lo-fi distortion of Olsen’s singing. Otherwise, the intro track, title track, and Ghost On all exemplify Olsen’s career-long attributes of good songwriting combined with unique, piano-heavy instrumentals that really charge exactly what she’s lyrically trying to communicate. Through The Fires also has a great outro (this time with a harsh, buzzy electronic lead) and Chasing the Sun is an absolutely beautiful, elegant violin-accompanied conclusion to a heart-warming LP. ~8

Weezer – SZNZ: Summer: Continuing with their SZNZ series of shorter projects, this one is fairly solid and just a good seven tracks of Weezer. The silly lyrics, fitting vocal inflections to go with those lyrics, and the rock instrumentals are all there, basically executing their forte in this mini album. I’m not really sure what the seasons actually have to do with these projects, though, as the lyrics are predictable ones from any Weezer project (perhaps these are just thoughts Cuomo has in each season?). My favorite tracks are Records, Blue Like Jazz, and Thank You and Good Night. ~6

Logic – Vinyl Days: An interesting array of thirty tracks, with half of them just being samples and recordings of random people in the music community, it is mostly a groovy experience of short MF DOOM-like tracks. The DOOM influence is clear with a variety of hard-hitting beats and a great focus on verbal delivery along with the mentioned integration of samples. However, it’s obviously nothing close to what DOOM has created, nonetheless, probably one of the best I’ve heard from Logic. There are many great features like iamJMARS, Big Lenbo, C Dot Castro, Langston Bristol, RZA, and many more, giving a great old-school vibe to the album. Still, many of the recorded messages in between tracks were very cringey and petty, but I guess I’m glad Logic expressed himself (Fantano and Michael Rappaport especially, even though the latter was very funny). Despite other positive criticisms, I still feel like the length drags a bit. Some enjoyable tracks but most of them fly over my head. 5.5-6.5

Tyler, The Creator – Cherry Bomb + Instrumentals: I’ve been listening to just the instrumentals for the last few weeks, and truly impressed with how much effort was put into these whilst being experimental at the same time; the strong reactions Tyler had to the negative criticism he got at the time is definitely justified as I agree that most were too fast to judge.