There’s something in film school called “The When Harry Met Sally Effect”. Some younger students Dont understand what a big deal that movie is because of how heavily introduced every Rom-Com that came after it. That’s what I heard when I listened to this album. It so clearly influenced so much I heard and loved later, it was almost hard to remember how it listened in the moment. Still, when I listened on my headphones, I was deeply impressed by the complexity of the instrumentation. There’s so much going on here that isn’t obvious at first. Delightful, I wish I had listened to it when it first came out!

Holy crap, that came out of nowhere. Soulful, sinful, absolutely delightful. Beats so heavy I could build on them, lyrics so thoughtful I'm still thinking about them. I'm loving this project so much already - there's so much I never realized I hadn't heard. This was a total revelation. I'll be listening to it again.

Now that was interesting. I of course already knew MGMT from my youth - "Kids" and "Electric Feel" were everywhere when I moved to LA in 2010 - but I hadn't actually sat and listened to the album. The album itself has a remarkably different sound than the three headline acts (including Time to Pretend). While those three have an electronic, indie-pop sound, the rest of the album is MUCH more accoustic, much more thoughtful, almost melancholy. Kind of a mix between shoegaze and folk. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that it works cohesively - it feels like the band was shotgunning stuff at the wall to see what stuck. The result? Three all-time bangers and a full album that is never greater than the sum of its parts.

Holy crap. Holy CRAP. I'd heard the big singles ("Mysterious Ways") and I didn't realize just how STRONG that album was beyond the singles. Like, there are half a dozen songs on there that aren't breakout singles just because the singles are SO STRONG. Partially it's my age (I just turned 40), but to me, this era of U2 is what ROCK is. Funky, hard but not metal or alt. Fun, intense. Loved this one to death.

I mean, it's The Boss. I was raised on this music by my father, who preferred "Born in the USA" and Springsteen's 80's/90's era stuff. I knew Thunderroad and Born to Run, of course, but it was that last song, Jungleland, that absolutely floored me. Sad, soulful, with the blues influence so thoroughly worn on its sleeve you couldn't possibly ignore it. Damn and a half.