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11:31 · 2,289 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The Smile's A Light for Attracting Attention is described as a Radiohead record with a jazz drummer, Tom Skinner of Sons of Kemet alongside Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, pulling the material toward krautrock and loose free jazz.
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- The album is mapped against the back catalogue track by track: two songs carry Yorke's solo and Amnesiac side, two sit in King of Limbs rhythms, and one is classic Radiohead falsetto.
▶ 00:00:42
- Everything Everything's Raw Data Feel is called their best since Get to Heaven, an amalgamation of everything they have done with an electronic layer, and one of its best tracks nearly missed the record for being too strange.
▶ 00:01:35
- Topical Dancer by Charlotte Adigery and Bolis Pupul came about because their solo music appeared in the same cult film and friends suggested they go to a studio together.
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- On that record the production is the attraction, from the sub-bass panning on Esperanto to the dark synths elsewhere, with a deadpan delivery compared to Confidence Man.
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- Jack White's Fear of the Dawn is the stadium-riff side of his catalogue rather than the folk side, carrying some of the heaviest blues tracks of his career.
▶ 00:04:45
- Dawn FM extends After Hours with Max Martin back and Oneohtrix Point Never added, built on a radio-purgatory concept with Jim Carrey as the host in the interludes.
▶ 00:05:37
- Caprisongs is technically a mixtape, and the read is that FKA twigs grouped the songs there because they felt too mainstream for her core catalogue.
▶ 00:06:51
- Denzel Curry's Melt My Eyes See Your Future is picked as the year's best hip hop album for range, moving through jazz, boom bap, a JPEGMAFIA twist, pop with T-Pain, R&B and trap while staying coherent.
▶ 00:07:48
- Ants from Up There is called nearly perfect, chamber pop in the first half moving to post-rock in the second, made more poignant by Isaac Wood leaving the band.
▶ 00:09:08