Rapid Fire Reviews: The First Week Of The Year

After the chaos of the year-end lists I took some time off the blog, went to the beach with my friends and even started a new job. But it's time to get back to my favorite pastime, reviewing records. The first week of the year was surprisingly lucrative in terms of new releases and while there's a record or two I plan on covering in full, here are the ones I wanna run through real quick.

Ambient 23 - Moby

Moby isn't shy about releasing a LOT of music and he kicked off the year with a big ambient project in Ambient 23. The 16 tracks here run almost two and a half hours and they really do feel like a throwback to some classic ambient music. That's because Moby deliberately used older instruments to record the album and also mentioned that it's intended to throwback to some of the early days of ambient like Brian Eno and Jean-Michelle Jarre. He wasn't kidding about that because I could have easily placed this project somewhere in the late 70s or early 80s if I didn't know it just came out. That means the record isn't likely to do anything you've never heard before, but it also goes deeper than just tribute and proves Moby thoroughly understands the era he's querying from. That means there isn't really much to say in terms of breaking down the sound and progression of this album in its individual pieces, but also that what Moby pulls off here should be a very palatable start to the year for ambient music fans. 6/10

Married In Mount Airy - Nicole Dollanganger

While commercial success may have never been in the cards for an artist like Nicole Dollanganger, her decade-plus of dreamy sadcore is as influential to internet-core music as anyone not named Ramona. After an out-of-character five-year gap following her previous record Heart Shaped Bed, she returned with a trio of singles that forecasted a return to the chilling minimalism fans had come to expect from her music. The quality of those singles doesn't waste any time rearing their head as the opening ten minutes of the record is punctuated by the great Gold Satin Dreamer which follows an excellent title track and opener. Unfortunately, the quality does take a bit of a dip after that point. The songs never get outright bad on account of how solid the lo-fi chilling slowcore foundation they're built on is, but they never really hit a point that's quite as engaging as it starts off. The closest it comes is on the phenomenally titled Nymphs Finding The Head Of Orpheus where the gentle piano keys are the only thing in the mix not reverbing far into the distance which allows the song to have a compelling mix of instrumentation underneath the steady slow pacing shown front and center. Finally, I'll say I enjoyed the two short tracks at the end of the record quite a bit. Summit Song is an instrumental track with one of the coldest and most isolating sound palettes on the record and I'll Wait For You To Call is the painful finale to the record. This album doesn't necessarily present the most variety of anything I've ever heard but it does have a good idea at its core and spends over 40 minutes exploring it to mostly good results. If you're craving some new sad girl anthems for 2023, you didn't have to wait long because Nicole delivered. 6.5/10

I Rest My Case - Youngboy Never Broke Again

Youngboy puts out a genuinely insane amount of music. At one point I was trying to keep up and then the monotony of it all kind of melted my brain when I tried to review one of his albums in 2021. But because it's the beginning of the year and because I think I can genuinely come up with more to say about this album than the new 03 Greedo project, I'll take another shot at covering Youngboy. One thing I can say about his recent run of projects that makes it impossible for the same thing that happened to me in 2021 to happen again is that Youngboy is taking a lot more artistic risks on these tracks at least on the vocal side. The instrumentals will sound like mostly familiar high-energy trap flavors but there's a lot more weird vocalizing here than on most of Youngboy's earlier projects. While I'm pleased by that improvement there are two issues I have that basically became my predominant problems with the album. The first is that Youngboy will absolutely try ideas that he has nowhere near the vocal range to pull off and that makes some of these songs feel incredibly awkward. The other issue is that it's occasionally painfully obvious who Youngboy is trying to emulate. I've never had this complaint before on one of his albums but on this record he frequently sounds like he's so blatantly trying to copy the very distinct vocal style of Trippie Redd. If you can imagine what Youngboy trying to be Trippie Redd sounds like then you'll understand a pretty core issue I have with the album. Ultimately, this was never really for me and the cult of YouTube viewers that YoungBoy has will still ride for anything he puts out, but even compared to his generally underwhelming discography, this isn't great. 4/10