8/4/25 - IN SEARCH OF . . .

★★★★★
In Search Of... is N.E.R.D's first album and one of my favorite pieces of music probably ever. It should be obvious by this point in my reviews that I really like rock music, and N.E.R.D as a group has everything I like about rock along with a quality lyricism I don't think you can get anywhere other than rap. Pharrell is so extremely talented and he and Chad Hugo work so well together and it makes their fallout even more sad but that's not really the point of this review. I have the UK release of the Advance CD and as much as I love it, the decision to use live instruments on the official release makes the album so much better and makes it so much more unique, there is so much talent involved and it makes the whole project shine.
TL;DR: so good but pharrell williams is so evil

FAV SONG: ROCKSTAR

7/28/25 - IN RAINBOWS

★★★★✩
I listen to a lot of radiohead (I have 4/9 albums on CD) and I think In Rainbows is one of their best works. Six out of the ten total tracks are basically perfect in my mind and Disk 2 has my favorite Radiohead song that isn't from The Bends (Bangers + Mash), but I can't give it a full five stars because that would be (to me) putting it on the same level as The Bends and Pablo Honey which is just not something that I believe. It has some extremely high highs (Jigsaw Falling Into Place, Nude, Weird Fishes/Apreggi, All I Need, Bodysnatchers) but the fact that Reckoner/House of Cards/15 Step aren't on that same level brings it down a little bit for me.
TL;DR: it's peak until you compare it to anything else by radiohead

FAV SONG: BODYSNATCHERS

7/21/25 - DON'T TAP THE GLASS

★★★★★
I wasn't expecting another Tyler album so soon after CHROMAKOPIA but I'm definitely not mad about it. DON'T TAP THE GLASS is a welcome departure from the more experimental and conceptual style of CHROMAKOPIA and IGOR. DTTG is more reminiscent to me of Tyler's pre Flower Boy art and I really like that because I've always preferred his more standardly or objectively 'rap' music to his more pop/experimental music. Awesome album he was not kidding when he said you have to dance
TL;DR: stream DON'T TAP THAT GLASS today it's AOTY

FAV SONG: DON'T TAP THAT GLASS/TWEAKIN'

7/14/25 - CELEBRITY SKIN

★★★⯪✩
Celebrity Skin is Hole's third album and unfortunately my least favorite. It has very high highs (Celebrity Skin, Awful, Hit So Hard, Petals) but the rest of the album just doesn't really stick out to me. As a follow up to Live Through This I find it a little bit dissapointing, not because it's a bad album but because it fails to reach the bar thats been set. Celebrity Skin is much poppier than any of Hole's previous releases and it (for me, anyways) loses the edgyness that made Hole so interesting and fun to listen to. In terms of catchiness and quality Celebrity Skin is a great album but it lacks the spark that makes me enjoy Live Through This and Pretty on the Inside.
TL;DR: Objectively a quality album, but doesn't really stand out to me especially following Hole's other albums.

FAV SONG: AWFUL

7/7/25 - TEENS OF DENIAL

★★★★★
This weeks (late by one day) album is Car Seat Headrest's 'Teens of Denial', released in 2016 under Matador Records. It is the bands tenth album and my personal favorite from them, easily clearing the more popular 'Twin Fantasy'. ToD has a more rock adjacent sound in my opinion that makes it appeal to me a lot more and as much as I really enjoy the lyricism on Twin Fantasy, ToD's writing will always resonate with me in a very different way. Its the kind of album I would play if I was driving somewhere fast, if that makes sense. It was the first CSH album I actually listened to all the way through and because of that I think it will always be kind of special to me.
All in all, I love this album a lot. If you like CSH's other stuff but haven't really listened to it, I definitely reccomend it.

FAV SONG: DESTROYED BY HIPPIE POWERS

6/30/25 - D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L

★★★★★
We're starting our weekly album reviews off strong with Panchikos first album : D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L . Released initially as an ep in 2000, D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L (often shortened to just D>M) and the band recieved little recognition until the cd was discovered by a 4chan user in a charity shop in Nottingham years after its release. D>M the album is actually a combination of the original D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L ep and a second unreleased ep, Kicking Cars, so we are technically reviewing both!
In my opinion, D>M remains Panchikos best release to date. 'Failed At Maths' and 'Ginkgo' are both very good without a doubt, but theres a kind of real rawness to D>M that isn't captured in their other two albums. It reminds me a little of Lorde's 'Pure Heroine', not in its sound but in the feeling it has. I think its most likely due to the band having been teenagers when they made it, and teenage art always seems to have something thats missing from music by older artists.

Overall, i really love this album. I heard it live for the first time earlier this month and it genuinely changed my life, I don't think I'll ever be the same.

FAV SONG: STABILISERS FOR BIG BOYS

CAN BAD PEOPLE MAKE GOOD MUSIC?

A take I see online often enough is that if someone is a bad person or does bad things, they are also a bad artist. While I do believe that if an artist is a bad person (ie - racist, abusive, etc) you shouldn't continue to consume their art in a way that benefits them, I think the idea that any artist who does bad things is a bad artist only makes it easier for these people to get away with doing bad things without any consequence. Courtney Love, for example. Courtney Love did and said racist things during her career (which, in my opinion, is very very over) and that is enough for me to put her firmly in my mind as a bad person. The excuse of her having been struggling with addiction doesn't mean anything, because being an addict doesnt force you to do or say racist things, at most it makes you more likely to say the things you already believe. I also love Hole, and they are to this day one of if not my number one favorite rock band. I can recognize that Courtney Love is a terrible person and also acknowledge that she is an extremely talented artist whos art directly impacted the other music I enjoy and continues to inspire a lot of modern female rock bands. The claim that bad people make bad art comes across to me as a way to avoid any serious conversations about the kind of music controversial figures can make. It reminds me of a lyric from Kendrick Lamar's 'Mortal Man', where he says, "That n**** gave us "Billie Jean, " you say he touched those kids?" By claiming that bad people make bad music, you are also insinuating that someone cannot be a bad person if their music is good enough, which makes it much easier to avoid the fact that your fav is very capable of these same actions that would make you consider someone else a bad person.
Another view of this is when an artist makes music that directly reflects their poor views, but that music is still good. A song being good is very rarely just about its lyricism, but more about how it sounds, if its catchy. Negative XP, another musician I like, represents this to me. Negative XP's lyrics are misogynistic, full stop. He is an incel who makes music for other incels and unfortunately, that music sounds really good. However, graphically misogynistic lyrics are not something special to 'Incelcore', as his style of music is dubbed, as almost all popular music written by men has an undercurrent of misogyny. I don't think this makes their music bad necessarily, but it does prove how deeply sexist views are engrained in our society if men can get away with calling women whores and bitches casually and still have their music played on the radio.
In short, I do think bad people can make good music and I think they very frequently do. Trying to claim that an artists music becomes bad when you realize that they're a bad person only makes it easier for other artists to get away with doing the same things because you will like their sound enough to ignore it.