^ I know. :[
Anyway! Updates! I apologize for the fact that only two are recommendations, I am a selfish Supes.
Ke$ha - Warrior (Deluxe Version): This album was a little better than I expected it to be, but I expected it to be pretty bad so that really isn’t saying a whole lot. Still, though, there were a few very pleasant surprises on this album. There are songs with a hint of win like “Die Young”— which has a great chorus and a vocal flourish I love—that are ruined by the verses and lyrics. That said, even if I don’t personally like the vulgarity, if there is one thing I like (kind of) about Ke$ha, it’s that she at least shows that women can objectify men and treat them like crap just like they do to women; that women can be the dominant ones telling guys to sit down and stop bitching and just be the one in control. Like in the song “Gold Trans Am”. It’s kinda funny. The song is very very vulgar and stuff, but I can’t help but laugh and be all “you show ‘im, sister!” along with it. Not a fan of it, but still. The only two real surprises were “Love Into the Light” and “Past Lives”, which were unexpectedly gorgeous, ambient pieces with production that I just loved and pretty great delivery by her. So yeah, this isn’t exactly going to be one of my most-played albums, but it wasn’t as miserable an experience as I thought it might be. Favourite tracks were “Love Into the Light”, “Past Lives”, “Dirty Love (feat. Iggy Pop)” and “Warrior”.
Ke$ha - Deconstructed: Whoever did the production on this EP is amazing. The ambience and soundscapes are something I was not expecting from Ke$ha in the slightest, and her vocals are pretty great untouched here. It kind of makes me wish she didn’t want to do dance music. “Blow” and “Die Young” acoustic are better, but they’re songs with subpar lyrics just prettied up. Still, that music… The highlight is easily “The Harold Song” as an acoustic interpretation. It was already my favourite Ke$ha song (not saying much, but I liked it a lot since I heard it), but this version is just outstandingly gorgeous to me. I’m sure none of you would agree, but my lord I love it. It’s amazing how great her voice can sound. The album is almost psychedelic at points, not even joking. Can she just make music like this from now on? Please? I would gladly pay for an album that sounded like “The Harold Song” sounds here.
Mumford & Sons - Babel: I wasn’t particularly impressed with this album. I really like Marcus Mumford’s voice and sometimes they all sound fantastic together, but for the most part none of the album really felt particularly inspired and I didn’t find myself really wanting to relisten to any of the tracks. Which sucks, because I really like the sound…I just don’t like how they use it. :[ I kind of want to check out Sigh No More to see if it’s any better, but we’ll see. My favourite tracks were “Holland Road”, “Lovers’ Eyes”, “Hopeless Wanderer” and “Broken Crown”.
M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming: As a whole, I really liked this album. I wasn’t so sure about it at first, but after I started thinking of it as a soundtrack to an imaginary film that contained the album’s story, it started to work for me a lot better. Some of the tracks were amazing and some of them were a little above average, but most of them fell somewhere in-between. I’m fine with that, though, because that still means I found quite a few good songs that I’m sure are going to get many more listens from me. :] It was a really nice album. My favourite tracks were “Midnight City”, “Raconte-Moi Une Histoire”, “OK Pal” and “Year One, One UFO”.
The Format - Dog Problems: Overall I don’t like this quite as much as fun. I know it’s dumb to go in comparing them, but I can’t really help it, seeing as Nate Ruess is the frontman for both. On its own it’s still good, though. There isn’t a whole lot of experimentation or trying anything that isn’t normal alternative rock, but still, there are several tracks good enough to warrant a listen. Well, most of the tracks are good enough, but sometimes it falls flat and sometimes it’s great. My favourites are “Matches”, “Dog Problems”, “Snails”, “Inches and Falling” and “If Work Permits”.
Alban Berg - Wozzeck: I listened to this before Lulu at Crudblud's recommendation. This was a pretty good opera. To be honest, I wasn’t completely thrilled, but not in a way that I didn’t like it. It was nice to listen to and I enjoyed it, even if I have no idea what anyone was saying. :] The instrumentation was pretty good, if not particularly exciting to me, and obviously the singers’ voices were good (assuming you like opera voices). So while it wasn’t my favourite thing ever, it was still a pleasant experience that I think would’ve been much better actually being there for.
Imagine Dragons - It's Time: I don’t think I like it as much as Night Visions, but this is a damned fine EP. While the quality of songs is overall probably the same, I just preferred Night Visions’ diversity, how one track could be upbeat pop-rock, the next could be brooding with reverberating, pounding drums, another could be a 10-minute mix and so on. Still, though, this is a really great rock EP of eight tracks that still manage to be varied enough to not lose my attention for even a moment. I think Imagine Dragons is going to be one of my next big favourite bands that I listen to a lot! My favourite tracks were "Amsterdam", "Pantomime", "Look How Far We've Come" and "America".
Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience: It’s hard to accuse music fans of today of having a short attention span when the reigning #1 album for the last month has an average song length of 7-8 minutes. They tend to get more interesting in the second halves, possibly to stop you from growing bored with them. It works, too. The instrumentals are incredibly ornate and wonderful, and Justin’s voice and falsetto help make the album unique. No matter what you or I think of him, he’s brave to take a risk like this album…and clearly it’s paid off. That said, my one main problem is that he so awkwardly treads the line between “classy” and “look at me, I’m a rich womanizer”. Somehow, though, how good the music is tends to balance that out and make even those songs worth hearing. Overall, it was just great to listen to—interesting even when the tracks weren’t so amazing. My favourites are “Blue Ocean Floor” (by far; the instrumental sounds like Port Blue), “Mirrors”, “Let the Groove Get In”, Tunnel Vision” and “Pusher Love Girl”.
James Blake - Overgrown: This is, hands down, the best album I have heard in a while. I got his first album mistakenly for my birthday a few years back ‘cause I’d just discovered dubstep and thought it was a dubstep album, only to find out it’s *post*-dubstep, which sounds a hell of a lot different and much more minimalist. Didn’t like it on the first listen, save for the overwhelmingly claustrophobic track “The Wilhelm Scream”. After a while, his style started to grow on me and I came to love it. Now this album…it sounds like a perfection of it. Not content to make music that sounds like everything else, he employs minimalist tracks, tracks with tons of layers and depth, small ones that build up into huge ones, only to flicker out again, odd vocal deliveries and harmonies, everything. Some of it, like “To the Last”, is just perfection to my ears. I’ve never heard someone use electronic music so beautifully. My favourites were really all of them, but the top few at the moment are probably “To the Last”, “Digital Lion”, “Retrograde” and “Our Love Comes Back”.
Paramore - Paramore: Bought this album when I'd heard it was released a bit ago. All-in-all, this is definitely the best of Paramore that I’ve heard. The instrumentation and composition is epic, the lyrics are much better written and I found myself able to relate to the songs a lot more than with their other stuff. It’s clear how much they’ve grown, how Hayley’s gone from a teen rock star to an adult, so on and so forth. In general, they have just improved greatly and I’m glad I decided to get this album. :] I liked pretty much all of the tracks on here a lot, but I think my favourites right now are “Part II”, “Still Into You”, “Anklebiters” and “Last Hope”.
Lescop - Lescop: Overall, while I admire the soundscapes and I admit that the album is really well put together, I’m not sure how much I enjoyed it personally. Several of the tracks were just a little too boring for me, weren’t really anything particularly special. They were still nice to listen to and I think the album is great either way, but ah well. I think some of them were victims of my mood, too. Anyway, it was a really nice, pretty album and that is good. :] My favourites were “Le Vent”, “Paris S’Endort”, “Tokyo, La Nuit” and “Un Rêve”.
Young Dreams - Between Places: It wasn’t as good as I was hoping, but this was still a pretty nice rock/electronic album. It reminded me of The Beach Boys quite a bit in the vocal delivery, and the musical layers and soundscapes only helped to enhance that feeling. That said, a lot of it—like the Beach Boys—is too vacantly happy and just pleasant-sounding for me to really love it. Where it sounds so harmless. Even so, it’s still well-done and, while I would’ve likely enjoyed several songs more without his vocals, it’s still a good album as well. My favourite tracks were “Young Dreams”, “The Girl That Taught Me to Drink and Fight”, “Dream Alone, Wake Together” and “Wounded Hearts Forever”—especially the last minute or so of the latter track.
Alban Berg - Lulu: I enjoyed this quite a bit more than Wozzeck, despite it being about seventy-two times longer. It was a lot more powerful musically, and thanks to reading the story summary I could kind of recognize parts of it and it was more of a story…albeit an insane soap opera one where there are four-hundred relationships and everyone dies. Still, though, it sounded a lot better and there are many more songs on here I actually want to keep. :] So win! Such long albums are still hard to get through, though…