Listening to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an event. Somehow, in a world saturated with great music, Kanye West has proven an ability to regularly produce some of the most compelling, globally and internally poignant at once, most listenable pieces of music today. On his fifth album, as he has regularly done for nearly a decade now, Kanye has raised the bar to superhuman levels yet again, potentially changing the game one more time.
There is an internalized swagger that bursts out of your speakers for the entirety of this album. Kanye has never been lacking confidence, and here, it’s like listening to a man who is truly the best in the world at what he does. Kanye lets you know what’s truly on his mind, and that’s the sign of a truly good lyricist. He’s not painting these vague, generalized portraits here, these are personal songs. Kanye proves he hasn’t lost touch with the world. In fact, he might be getting a better handle on it with each album.
Infinite Arms is the third studio album from Band of Horses, and it immediately jumps out compared to their last effort as infinitely more mainstream. Whereas Cease to Begin is an incredibly moody record, even paralyzingly so at times, Infinite Arms decides to switch canoes midstream and head into a new, more accessible direction.
It’s often helpful to compare similarly styled bands in order for the reader of a review or opinion piece to understand the genre, type, or style of music the writer is talking about. Allow me to describe Owl City’s album Ocean Eyes in three words.
In this day of the internet and the public’s insatiable appetite for that which is not yet universally available, I was recently able to preview MGMT’s second full length album Congratulations via their website. The album is scheduled for a physical release on April 13th, 2010, and I am lucky to get a couple of weeks head start listening the Hell out of this thing, thanks in part because the whole record leaked and they were cool enough to just make it available to fans early.