Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

lol what's with the scare quotes around "guitar sound"

hello Mr. Guitar....if that is your real name

this album pretty universally has her worst-sounding vocals too

Wow, agree to massively disagree on this point. These are her best vocals I've heard on anything she's done. One of the things I disliked about her last was how she utilized her voice creatively and texturally and that it just wasn't to my subjective preferences.

Another thing - while we might be complaining about the mixing to death here, I mentioned those other records above because while some of them sound even worse than this record, like Tyler's last couple, and even Earl Sweatshirt's last one, they never got the scrutiny this is getting. It's like everyone's just trying to find something wrong with it so they can justify their dislike of Grimes now.

I'm kinda done with Earl but yeah sounds like shit

i did hate the way the last tyler album sounded (though i had no real problems with flower boy) but that at least felt like a deliberate stylistic choice rather than sounding as amateurish and unpolished as some of the tracks on this.

it's not all bad though, "so heavy", "4aem" and "before the fever" all sound fine.

based on what a lot of ppl itt who had heard it ahead of time were saying I was steeling myself for the possibility that maybe it was some sort of incompetent tuneless mess but I just don’t hear it at all, I hear it as a very accomplished and natural sounding follow up to her previous work and I think a lot of the negative discourse around the album (here but also elsewhere and in the twitterverse) really is related to extracurricular stuff. I’m not singling anyone specific out nor am I saying this is why everyone is criticizing it but the consensus in this thread does not jibe with this album whatsoever imo.

my disappointment really has nothing to do with the extracurricular stuff, i was really hoping it would be great despite all that but she didn't deliver. i wouldn't even say it's an incompetent tuneless mess, just disappointing and frustrating between the relative lack of hooks and jarring production.

I’ve been a pretty big fan of her stuff but I have yet to listen this. Been pretty apprehensive tbh. Right about now I’m well drunk and high enough that I’m about to give it a shot.

i wasn't huge on "we appreciate power" at the time and still think the lyrics are terrible but it's ended up being one of the strongest things from this album. i think "my name is dark" and "you'll miss me" would be much better if the guitars had that sort of crunch to them

I can't make sense of these opinions yet, which I appreciate.

I really want to like it but I just can’t get too far with it. I still can’t get behind the way it sounds. I’ll revisit it around june/july to see if I’m in a different mindset and with a better soundsystem.

It “lacks hooks”?? Words have no meaning for you lol

Maybe it would come across as more confidently itself to skeptics if it were longer. I’d like it to be ... more. Literally the only thing I can find to complain abt

only relatively, i'm not saying it's tuneless or anything but it's not really as densely packed with hooks as art angels or even visions. even ignoring all the issues i have with the production i'm just not that into this batch of songs. here's how id classify my feelings about them:

decent but i don't really feel strongly about:
so heavy i fell through the earth
4aem
before the fever
you'll miss me when i'm not around

would be pretty good with better mixing/production:
delete forever
idoru

meh:
darkseid
new gods
my name is dark
violence

My name is dark is my fav song on the album 🥴

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Darkseid is great and putting it so early in the tracklisting is evidence that the album is going out of its way to stick out at awkward angles.

Her voice remains paper thin but there's something really interesting about the vocal melodies on this album, then again I think Grimes is at her least interesting when she making more or less conventional pop hooks (cf Realiti do not @ me).

which version tho

poll

I love the drums on "My Name is Dark."

I’m finding it fine overall but I have a thing for “reverb albums” which this sure as shit is. Sounds pretty familiar tho, and the “digital faerie” schtick feels about as fresh as steampunk.

If anything to me this album sounds too polished (caveat - on two listens, one in the kitchen, one while walking to work), in that any issues I have with the sound come from instruments being so compressed that they basically disappear into a wall of sound. I'm pretty certain that's a deliberate aesthetic decision, though. Grimes has never been interested in her music sounding 'real' anymore tha she has been in her image looking 'real'. She's all about unrealiti.

Early take is that I quite enjoyed this, and want to listen to it again. I like that it's not as stridently pop and hook-reliant as Art Angels, it feels like it might reward the kind of repeated, almost ambient listening that Visions really benefitted from.

Those tinny guitar chords are like the most Oasis chords I've heard in years, which is v funny. I am very happy with the idea that Elon might have played them.

“This album is too polished”
“This album is too shambolic”

this sounds like a Moby album

specifically, Everything Is Wrong

Love this album and don’t really have any issues with the production, but then I am pretty much the opposite of an audiophile.

Haha it kinda does sound like it was produced by Moby in 1995 though.

Euler otm (also: lol).

Delete Forever sounds better w/repeated listens. I like that it's a slightly cut-up, uncanny valley, highly fraught take on this sort of song. It has seemingly generic parts but not a generic execution.

I would say from first listens that "My Name Is Dark" is easily the strongest song here (and one of her best)

but then I am pretty much the opposite of an audiophile.

― Tim F, Monday, February 24, 2020 2:12 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

you're too big a get physical fan for this to be totally true lol

I like this on first listen, it holds my attention more than some of her previous stuff. "Violence" kind of sounds like a deconstructed version of Euasure's "Chains of Love"... that's my big insight/contribution for the day.

the Garbage lyric ref in "My Name Is Dark" ("stupid girl") seems like a nicely direct ref to the album's main era of inspiration.

but then I am pretty much the opposite of an audiophile.

― Tim F, Monday, February 24, 2020 2:12 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

you're too big a get physical fan for this to be totally true lol

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Tuesday, 25 February 2020 00:09 (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I suppose how it breaks down for me is that I am obsessed with arrangements but have never really cared about having high quality speakers, headphones etc, so I'm not typically offended by music which self-proclaimed audiophiles claim falls flat on those grounds.

I can definitely hear that this album's sound (esp. the percussion) feels both deliberately hollowed out and compressed, and I can see how this tends to reduce or interfere with the listener's ability to really appreciate the layering in real time, certainly on the first few listens (by way of example, some of the rhythm tracks are pretty complex, but they don't exactly call attention to themselves in that regard).

But this feels pretty consistent with the general approach on some of the back-half of Visions - something that may be obscured if one's recollection of that album reduces to like "Genesis" and "Oblivion".

Yeah there are def. some similarities to the production values of the first Garbage album (not the second).

I’ve seen a few reviews which have pretty amateurishly criticized this for not being a clear and focused assessment of the climate crisis when it seems obvious that the subject matter was more an inspiration and gave her a direction in ways that are not present in the lyrics vs her doing a Neil Young Monsanto Years thing.

One review I read criticized Darkseid for not having much in the way of lyrical content and quoted Grimes’ part as evidence......

Reading some of the takedowns and I think writers again should stop trying to treat lyrics as the whole truth of the matter and stop criticizing an album for what it’s not content wise vs what it is. Which still doesn’t make sense bc it feels like a progression from the more desolate sounding parts of Visions so you’d think people wouldn’t be shocked by how it sounds.

Yeah - the idea of dinging this album b/c the stated "concept" doesn't come thru is laughable (I mean, it doesn't, but who gaf... Grimes fans, I guess?)

also basically every concept album ever loses the thread midway through at best, why should Grimes be any different?

Yeah there are def. some similarities to the production values of the first Garbage album (not the second).

― Tim F, Monday, February 24, 2020 7:38 PM

I don't hear it at all. The first Garbage boasted a real clarity, and, just to be clear, I don't view "clarity" as a virtue. The back of this album reminds me of a denser, thicker Art Angels. Less replete with hooks, although you may count the distorted harmonies as hooks (I do). It is, however, foolish to discount listeners looking for a "Realiti" or "Flesh Without Blood." "You'll Miss Me When I'm Not Around" and "My Name Is Dark" come close, though.

I mostly meant in the way that the guitars and the electronics tend to bleed into another a lot, though some of the album tracks may be a better example of that than, like, "Queer" or something.

In my head I could imagine the third Curve album being an even closer reference point but other than the use of "Chinese Burn" on Buffy I haven't revisited that album in over twenty years.

have finally heard this album, which I generally like to really like but is definitely patchy in quality

I don't hear curve at all except maybe "you'll miss me when I'm not around," which is mixed the exact opposite as a curve song would be

I agree this sort of sounds like produced by Moby pre-play but I don’t agree it sounds like Garbage’s debut. That one actually sounds good.

This doesn’t sound like Garbage but it does sound like garbage

: >

There I made a joke.

I think it’s cool that contemporary artists are putting a new spin on that mid/late-‘90s sound; I personally feel like it never reached its full potential back in the actual era.

Heavy compression as aesthetic (as opposed to hamfisted mastering) has been a thing for years now - Oneohtrix, Arca, the first Twigs album etc etc. Sounds pureed and fused together into a veneer - this is definitely deliberate and it works here.

Sounds like shit when there's just one sound in the mix admittedly but that hardly ever happens here.

The last Holly Herndon, Yves Tumor, Chino Amobi...

Just realized there's a Deluxe Edition of MIss Anthropocene that adds "We Appreciate Power" + four alt. mixes of other album tracks.

Actually no, “So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth - Art Mix” is the strongest song here

It’s totally fair tho to not appreciate how it’s deployed ... like it’s been around enough to “get it” and still have it be ineffective

Nb I still think this album rules, I am just imagining alternate versions w different mixes

Just realized there's a Deluxe Edition of MIss Anthropocene that adds "We Appreciate Power" + four alt. mixes of other album tracks.

― Murdered-Out Highlander XLE (morrisp), Tuesday, February 25, 2020 1:44 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Aha! What I was looking for