Music journalism is going to the wall, and places for sensible, well-informed, nuanced takes on the latest releases are dwindling. So we thought we might as well put the final nail in the coffin.
Read last week’s album reviews here.
Bloc Party
Anatomy of a Brief Romance
Contagious Music
I’m usually pretty good at reading the room, but Bloc Party’s new breakup record is sending mixed signals. I can’t make up my mind: does this come off as too corny for words, or is there something strangely beautiful about it? There’s a playful spirit at work, with Kele Okereke delivering detailed, reference-heavy lyrics in a range of curious voices over a TikTok-friendly production style. Broadway opening number-adjacent single “Pigwig” has been met with some ridicule for its dewy-eyed joie de vivre and on-the-nose lyrics (“Every day is such a vibe/Every day that we’re alive”), but I think Bloc Party might be onto something.
I mean, just this week, we’ve had Donald Trump erroneously claiming that firefighters lifted him out of the rubble on 9/11; Anthropic’s alignment science lead revealing that the chance that AI will kill all humans within the next decade is greater than 10 percent; Beyoncé trying to get her fans to buy an empty wooden box that costs upwards of $1,000; Nicolas Cage’s $10.5 million Malibu mansion almost falling into a massive sinkhole; police drones chasing shoplifters; Hunter Biden’s $LAPTOP meme coin crashing shortly after launch; vibe-chemist Douglas Yao synthesizing an experimental schizophrenia drug in his garage; and a woman in the UK setting a new world record by eating a burrito in just 30.75 seconds. So, yeah, I’d say that Okereke is right: every day really is such a vibe. This record, on the other hand…
I can’t shake the sense that someone’s gaslighting me; is this a charming burst of melodrama fresh out of the heartbreak oven? An experiment to try to recover a bit of sincerity from the rubble of our collective irony collapse? Just: alright? It all feels a little like a psyop, so maybe it’ll eventually be recognized as a cult classic. That is, if any of us live long enough for that to happen.
5/10
TOMMY PISSEAU
The Tubs
Hard Life
Merge Records
The last time I was working out a notice period, I was in a state of acute emotional and psychological distress that could only be assuaged by listening to “5,6,7,8” by Steps on repeat. My anxiety sweats returned when I learned that the fiddle player from that track, Chris Haigh, is all over this new record from The Tubs, which sounds a lot like being in my head back then as my romantic ideals clashed with daily worries over “who’s gonna pay the rent?”—if you, too, were born to be a ’90s slacker but forced to work down a content mine, then this defiant, bittersweet album might be the push you need to finally quit. Rompin’ stompin’, pumpin’ jumpin’, slidin’ glidin’, here we go (to claim unemployment benefit).
9/10
BOB DOLE’D
Bonobo
Distance in Static
Ninja Tune
I’m going to spend my Friday evening kicking back with the new Bonobo record rather than watching Cole “Wavy” Johnson fight a chimp on PPV, like the internet wants. The electronic musician has assembled an international roster of collaborators—including Arooj Aftab, Nilüfer Yanya, and Ichiko Aoba—for this engaging, peaceable collection of tracks. It’s tranquil, playful, and kind, just like the species of great ape he shares his name with (which is definitely not the kind of creature that will switch up without warning, bite off your fingers, stomp on your testicles, and peel your face like a banana).
6/10
TRAVIS FICKLE
Green Lung
Necropolitan
Nuclear Blast
If you’re going to make a record about cemeteries, then you’d better make it raunchy and extravagant. With lusty guitars and yearning howls, Green Lung’s macabre theatrics seem to be in service of a single point: graveyards are for the living, not the dead. They might see the Victorian necropoli in their home city of London as an embodiment of their enduring interest in the “ultimate doom of humankind in the face of nature.” But I’m more worried about this album encouraging a dramatic influx of tombstone-romancing metalheads—and what this might mean for the native population of doggers and al fresco sex addicts. The general British public is not psychologically prepared for the spectacle of suburban swingers wearing corpse paint and spiked leather bracelets.
5/10
VADGE VIKERNES
This is Lorelei
The Singer in My Band
Matador
This record drifted out of Nate Amos’s head while he was daydreaming in the car, which is also how I wrote this review. I was dissociating in the passenger seat with these blissed-out, countryish traveling songs for company when the autonomous vehicle smashed through the central reservation, skidded down a grass verge, and burst into flames. His tender, reassuring voice soothed me as I watched the emergency services desperately struggle to open the doors and the interior steadily fill with smoke, until I was carried off into a fiery sleep. Ah, the thrill of the open road.
8/10
J. G. BALLSACK
Standing on the Corner
Standing on the Corner II
XL Recordings
I’m told that this weirdo collective’s peculiar new record, in all its fractured disorientation, has a “distinctly New York City sensibility.” I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I think it has something to do with dilettante Substackers, upwardly mobile sex workers, investment bankers nostalgic for a psycho age that never really existed, mentally ill subway demons, the most ambitious larpers from every small town in America, and endlessly disappointed tourists, all searching for an authentic experience of a place that can only be fleetingly understood in the euphoric echo of a half-remembered pop song.
7/10
ET 212, BRUTE
Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi
The post VICE Album Reviews, September 11: Bloc Party, The Tubs, Bonobo and More appeared first on VICE.
