What’s a good series without constant delays before finally delivering? Back in October, I put out a form to ask what music albums students would want reviewed. Finally, my schedule has opened up from my own musical activities (concerts, auditions, etc.) and I can put my time into reviewing your selections!
Up first is “a modern tragedy vol. 1” by grandson. Yes, I did not miss any capitalization in the album title or artist name. I love the styling choice of all lowercase titles – it seems to provide a more concise style, while possibly hiding a hint of laziness.
(Bias note: I usually tend to listen to instrumentals more than vocals, so I apologize if I criticize an album you might find lyrically intense for having weak music behind them. However, I don’t think that’s something I’ll need to criticize with this album.)
Track 1: Blood // Water – I love the distortion used over the vocals. I’m also loving the style of alternating between the hard electronic chorus and the more guitar-based verses. That contrast is exemplified by the distorted singing during the verses and the more screaming style during the chorus. The lyrics are a little repetitive, but they definitely get their point across.
Track 2: Stick Up – The verse has a really nice driving bass drum beat, really easy to bob your head to, tap your foot, etc. The chorus does some great addition of backing vocals behind ‘grandson’. However, the breakdown near the end is a little simple, and seems to be too close to sounding like the rest of the song.
Track 3: Despicable – The guitar intro sounds really good, and the clean vocals on top of it with added reverb gives the entire thing a great feel. I loved the build up into the drop, and the break itself is great. I love the random noise in the background of the drop, it seems to add a lot to the tone of the song. This is especially true on the last drop, with the held out synth note in the background.
Track 4: 6:00 [Explicit] – The lyrics on this strong are a little bit more edgy, and talk much more about physical violence. This kind of turns me away from the song, but the instrumental in the background is very strong and keeps me from skipping over it. However, I would consider this the weakest track on the album – it seems a little bit too repetitive for me, in both lyrical and musical content. I did like the bridge’s use of explicit language, however – it helped strengthen the emotion in the lyrics.
Track 5: Overdose – The lyrics were a bit unrelatable for me, so the song in general was a little weird to listen to. The more mellow guitar sound compared to the rest of the album was used very well to fit with the more depressing tone of the song. Connected to the mellow guitar, the entire song has a more mellow feel than the rest of the album, which provided a greater contrast. It might have worked better as a midpoint for the album, but it was still a strong closer for the album.
I’m going to use my own system of ratings in order to put how an album is put together from my point of view. The different factors I will be rating are: How much the album bops, how approachable the album would be to a general audience, how artistic the album is, and how unique it is; each factor will be rated out of 10. I personally prefer more unique albums, but since everyone has different opinions, I won’t put one specific score to judge the album by.
My final ratings are:
Bop level: 8/10 – The buildups and drops feel great, and all it needs is a little stronger feel in some of the tracks.
Approachability level: 7/10 – Nothing too weird for a general audience on the album in the instrumental backing. However, the lyrics are a bit political, and can get tense (especially in the last two tracks).
Artistic level: 5/10 – Each track has a distinct enough sound to set a certain tone for the song, but it could use more variation in instrumentation to have the songs stay distinct from one another.
Uniqueness level: 4/10 – While the album does have a bit of distinction between songs, it still doesn’t stray too far from a standard electronic buildup and drop style.
If you disagree, or want me to clarify any of my thoughts, please leave a comment! If you want to request a new song to review, submit it in this form.