Album Reviews: Kanye West - Donda

 by Alex Goode

Let's be real for a moment, you 100% know who Kanye West is. Whether it be from classic tracks like "Heartless" or "POWER", or from his recent shift into more gospel-inspired music, or from any of his crazy off-stage antics, I'm willing to bet that you know who he is in some way. And that's for a good reason, there's no denying the amount of creativity and influence that Kanye West has. Throughout his career, he's proven himself to be a powerhouse of talent and charisma, but you might be surprised to know that he only has a total of nine studio albums under his belt. There's been a few records that he started making and then didn't finish, but yeah. Only nine. Until now, that is. Kanye has returned with his tenth studio album, Donda (the title being a tribute to his late mother, Donda West). After weeks of speculation, weeks of listening parties, weeks of hype, some fans started to wonder if the project was ever gonna come out. And then, unexpectedly, on August 29th of 2021, it did. Kanye posted on his Instagram that UMG released the album without his permission, though. I don't know if that's true, but I still feel like it's worth saying. At any rate, I'm here to talk about it. There's a grand total of 27 tracks (thanks for that), so I should go ahead and get started.

Album Reviews: Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever

 by Alex Goode

Hey, everyone. Stillthony Latetano here, back with another less-than-timely album review. I'm not too off with this one, though, only about four weeks roughly. This time, I wanna talk about the new Billie Eilish record: Happier Than Ever. I'm willing to bet you've heard of Billie Eilish, she's pretty popular. She very quickly rose to fame when her song "Ocean Eyes" blew up, ultimately leading to the release of her don't smile at me EP in 2017. That project definitely has some hits, but I think it's overall a pretty mixed bag. And then there's the case of her debut album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, which dropped in 2019. I think that LP is very good, a super solid full-length debut. And now, Billie has returned once more with her sophomore album, the highly-anticipated "Happier Than Ever". It released on July 30th of 2021, and I was looking forward to it quite a bit. I thought a lot of the singles from it were pretty good, and I dig the aesthetic of the cover art (especially in contrast to that of WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP). I'm a little late, but now I'm finally getting around to listening to it and giving my thoughts on it. There's a total of 16 tracks on here, so I have quite a bit of ground to cover.

Album Reviews: Danny Elfman - Big Mess

 by Alex Goode

Danny Elfman is a name that you likely are familiar with. Maybe you remember him as the frontman of Oingo Boingo, or maybe you know him from his multiple collaborations with Tim Burton, but, whatever the reason may be, it's very likely that you know who he is. Well, as of October of 2020, he's back. He's releasing original music again, not just film scores! He started releasing a flurry of singles over the course of eight months, starting in October of 2020 and ending in May of 2021, which ultimately led to the June 2021 release of Big Mess, his first solo studio album since 1894's So-Lo (unless you consider that an Oingo Boingo project, like a bunch of people do). I'm a little late to it, I know, but I've been working on projects of my own recently and I haven't had a lot of time for blogs. That's gonna change, though. I'm gonna try and get these out semi-regularly, and I'm starting with a late review of Danny Elfman's Big Mess. There's a beefy tracklist, 18 songs in total, so I better get started.

EP Reviews: Matt Watson - OUCH!

 by Alex Goode

Hey, everyone. Trumpthony Gonetano here, coming at you with another blog where I talk about music that was made by a guy named Matt. This time, it's one of my favorite YouTube personalities: Matt Watson. You've probably heard of Watson, he's one half of SuperMega, he used to edit for Game Grumps, he's one of the funniest people on the entire internet. Well, did you know that he also dabbles in music? Cause he does! He is one of the founders of the Lazy Eye music label, said label sometimes produces music videos for other artists, and Matt also makes music of his own. He traditionally is known for more humorous music: "I'm In Love With My Dad", "No Nut November", the Nathan's Christmas trilogy. Then, he dropped the "covid-19 type beat" track, which showed that Watson is capable of producing unironic bangers from time to time. This paved the way for Matt to maybe release a more laid-back project in the near future, and that's exactly what he ended up doing! On September 3rd of 2020, Matt released an EP called OUCH!, and I have basically hyperfixated on it in the last few months. I guess now is as good of a time as any to properly give my thoughts on it. There's only six tracks, so this probably won't be too long of a review. 

Album Reviews: Matt Martians - The Drum Chord Theory

 by Alex Goode

Hello, everybody! My name is Barely Awake, and welcome back to another album review. This time, I'm taking it back a few years and not talking about a new release. I asked one of my friends for a suggestion as to what I should look into reviewing, he recommended this, and so here we are. This is The Drum Chord Theory, it was released on January 27th of 2017, and it was the debut solo studio album by Matt Martians. Let it be known that I am not too familiar with Matt's work outside of his contributions to Odd Future. Listening to this album was my first experience with Matt's solo work, so I guess there's no better start than by checking out his debut. It's a few seconds shy of being 42 minutes in length, and there's just twelve tracks, so this will be a much smoother experience than doing Music to Be Murdered By was. I'm very interested in checking this out, so let's get to it.

Album Reviews: Eminem - Music to Be Murdered By (Deluxe Edition)

 by Alex Goode

At this point, I don't think Eminem needs an introduction. He's widely regarded as the greatest rapper of all time, he's one of the biggest-selling artists ever, you definitely have heard of him. Irregardless of whether or not you like him, I know you've heard of him. Well, he's back with yet another surprise release. I'm just gonna be honest and say that it's getting a little predictable. It was pretty cool with Kamikaze cause it made sense. The title, the themes, it was a good idea to just drop it without announcement. After three of those, though, it's getting a little stale. But whatever, that's besides the point. This new album is a deluxe edition of Eminem's eleventh studio album, Music to Be Murdered By. The original was released on January 17th of 2020, and this deluxe version (title Side B) dropped on December 18th of 2020. Side B keeps all 20 of the original album's songs, and adds on 16 more, which rounds the tracklist out to a whopping 36 tracks. The average Eminem fan is probably going crazy right now, but I am in a different boat in the sense that I'm not a fan of his. Not a superfan, at least. I like some of his songs, but I'm not crazy about most of his discography (especially the newer stuff). I missed the chance to review MTBMB when it first came out, so I figured I'd use this time to talk about both discs on this new deluxe LP as opposed to just the new tracks. Who knows, maybe this album will turn me into a Stan! I doubt it very highly, but we'll see. This is the longest album I've ever reviewed, so let's just get this over with.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Worst to Best

 by Alex Goode

Hello! I have just accepted my role as the resident Anthony Fantano ripoff at this point, so I've decided to go back to a blog idea I had in November of 2018. Remember that blog I did where I ranked every Fall Out Boy album based on my personal preference? Yeah, I'm gonna do that again. This time, however, I'm gonna rank the studio albums of my current favorite band: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Nick Cave is a criminally underappreciated artist, so I'm hoping that this blog will help get some of my friends and family into his music. I will be ranking all seventeen Bad Seeds studio albums in order from my least favorite to my most favorite. I'm opting to omit albums released by Grinderman or The Birthday Party, as well as Cave's soundtrack albums and that Distant Sky live EP, because there's already a lot to cover when we're just talking about Bad Seeds albums. Maybe I'll do the rest of them some other time, but I'm deciding to only focus on the studio albums for right now. There's seventeen of them, like I said, so I better go ahead and get started. Remember that this is just my opinion. It's not like many of my friends know who Cave is anyway, but still keep in mind that this is just my silly personal preference. Let's begin.

Album Reviews: Goode - Goode Grief

 by Boris Fishpond

Hey, everyone. Ripthony Offtano here, coming at you with a review of an album I found on Spotify that I wanted to share with all of you because I thought it was interesting. The album is called Goode Grief, and it was released on October 9th of 2020 by a small-town indie experimental artist that goes by the name "Goode". Not much is known about Goode right now, except that he operates under the Bell Garden label. Goode Grief, the release of which was foreshadowed by the "Rivers Cuomo" and "End of the Road" singles, is actually his debut full-length project, and you can find it on just about any streaming service. I like giving attention to up and coming artists, and so I figured I should bring this new album to more people via this review. There's only nine tracks, so this shouldn't take too long.

Album Reviews: Machine Gun Kelly - Tickets to My Downfall

 by Alex Goode

Having gotten Nectar out of the way, I will now move on and talk about the new Machine Gun Kelly album. MGK is a name that, let's face it, you most likely only know from either Bird Box or the Eminem beef from a few years ago. There's much more to him than just that, though. The Cleveland-born musician has been at it since 2006, releasing a plethora of smash hit tracks like "Wild Boy", "Let Me Go", and (more recently), "I Think I'm OKAY". His 2019 album Hotel Diablo is one of my favorite LPs ever, featuring songs like "Candy", "Glass House", "Floor 13", "Hollywood Whore", and other songs that I would rank as MGK's best work to date. To say that I was excited for the release of this new record, Tickets to My Downfall, would be an understatement. His quarantine musical antics have been really enjoyable, my favorites being "Pretty Toxic Revolver", his "What's Poppin" remix, and his cover of Rihanna's "Love On the Brain". I've enjoyed the random covers, non-project singles, and other fun material he's been putting out lately, so perhaps a full album that is made under those same circumstances would be good? It's time to buy a ticket and enjoy the show. It should be worth noting that I'm talking about the 15-track first edition that came out on September 25th, not the deluxe edition or the Target version. Just to clear the air before I get started.

Album Reviews: Joji - Nectar

 by Alex Goode

First off, stream my new single "End of the Road", please and thank you. Secondly, hi. It has been a while since the Oliver Tree review, and I'm sorry about that. I've been away working on an album, which will be out on October 9th, but I've decided to come through with new blogs for a special occasion. Two artists that I really like, Joji and Machine Gun Kelly, released new albums on September 25th, the same day I released my new single. Joji dropped Nectar, and Machine Gun Kelly dropped Tickets to My Downfall. These are two albums that I was highly anticipating, so I decided I'd take some time and review both of them. I'll start with Nectar, because that was the one I listened to first. Plus, it's the longer of the two, so it's probably better to do this one first anyway. Let's take a dip into Nectar.

Album Reviews: Oliver Tree - Ugly is Beautiful

by Alex Goode

Hi! I bet you forgot this website existed! I personally didn't, I swear. Recently, the desktop that I've been using for every single one of my projects died. There was a thunderstorm, all the power got knocked out for a split second, everything came back on except for the desktop, and I haven't spent the time since then feeling absolutely horrible because of it. Not at all. But anyway, I now use a laptop that runs Linux for the time being, so it's back in business for Throw The Harpoon! I have several larger projects lined up, but I wanted to come back with something simple: Oliver Tree, one of my current favorite musical artists, aka the boy who cried album, has finally released Ugly is Beautiful. After a series of delays, which I'm not gonna hold against Tree himself, it started to look like we wouldn't be getting the album for a while, but then it finally dropped on July 17th of 2020. It's been in the works for five years according to Tree, and he recently confirmed during an interview with Anthony Fantano on Twitch that he'd be retiring from music now that this album is here. He's cited him battling his label for nearly half a decade as his reasoning, and I honestly can't blame him. That sounds immensely frustrating. But, at any rate, Ugly is Beautiful is here at long last, and so it is time for me to give my thoughts on it to the maybe four people I'm friends with that will actually care about it. Was it worth the wait? I'm gonna answer that from my perspective. Maybe people will like what I have to say, but probably not!