Johann Van Tassel

A three star to me means it is an album that I won’t be coming back to often. I like about half of the songs, but the rest is rather disappointing. To start, I really dont like the chaotic mess of sounds in most of the songs in the second half. There are musical decisions that really make no sense, and are unlistenable in my opinion. For example the way “Navigating” is said in the chorus of the song makes me want to jump into a river. Vignette is pretty decent, but is ruined by the “no its not me its for a friend” lines that sound plain tacky. Lavish is full of goofy verses. The “Drop drop drop” in at the risk of feeling dumb is so unpleasant to listen to. Snap Back has some unfathomably basic and predictable melodies and rhythms. Oldies Station is actually a solid song, besides being a little uninteresting instrumentally. While i really love Paladin Strait, they need to release a version that cuts out the two minutes at the end so that I can actually listen to it without having to endure the silence and the monologue. The Craving is a sweet song but its not something most of us will listen to for fun because of how raw it is. however The songs I do like (overcompensate, next semester, midwest indigo, routines in the night) are seriously high quality. Secondly, in comparison to a gold standard like Trench, there seems to be a complete disregard for pacing in the album. What shocked me most is that essentially every song had the same upbeat style. Trench had a nice variety of grooviness, somber sounds, upbeat sounds, and exotic ideas, whereas the clancy songs seem to mostly follow an upbeat radio pop song sound which becomes rather forgettable.