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I think the two big singles, "Machu Picchu", "Gratisfaction", "Life is Simple in the Moonlight", and even "Two Kinds of Happiness" are all up there (I like "You're So Right", too, but not quite as much as the above).

I'm usually one of the bigger Angles boosters, but Angles loses points for: "Call Me Back", "Metabolism", "Games" ITI loses points for: N/A

So true, you never get a Strokes write-up with a career recap.

Is This It Room on Fire Angles Comedown Machine First Impressions

I hadn't realized this was upon us! Awesome, even if Chris didn't think much of it. But the way people disagree about The Strokes, I never lose optimism about an album until I've heard it a few times. To wit: "which is why it’s hard to cozy up to a version of the band that has lost track of its identity." - they weren't allowed to change their sound? I think they've leaned too hard on synths for a while now, but how exactly were they supposed to "maintain their identity (sonically? personally?)" over 20 years? - "The group has occasionally glimpsed that old work hard and say it’s easy mojo again during their brand-management era: “All The Time” and “Taken For A Fool” could be Room On Fire B-sides" Huh? "Taken For a Fool" doesn't sound a thing like what they were doing in 2003! - "This ambivalence is unfortunate because Comedown Machine slaps. The nu-Strokes sound they’d been building toward ever since First Impressions had finally clicked into place." I know a lot of The Strokes' core fanbase, which I consider myself part of, have come around and boost Comedown Machine, but it still doesn't really excite me. It sounds a little....chinzy at times. "Tap Out" is 10/10, right up there with "Oblivius" for their best songs post-Angles, and "Slow Animals" is a gem, but the rest is kind of limp and good-not-great to me. Maybe it's leaning too hard on the '80s thing for me. Angles is hands down their best album since Room on Fire for me. - "But they’ve also evolved in fascinating ways, piling up more great tunes than I had remembered. They’ve built a solid catalog in spite of themselves." Yeah...you right there. Every single release has at least one truly perfect song on it - I don't love First Impressions, but it's got freakin "You Only Live Once"! Angles has a few, CM has "Tap Out", PPF has "Oblivius"....I can't wait to find this album's! Anyway, point being The Strokes are a hard band to take somebody's word for, and I'm going into this one expecting to enjoy.

Agreed...but is the fact that Tom will give 10s to stuff like this and actually commit to saying "Picture" is an 8 why he has to be the man for this column? Maybe we need someone who can view wack-ass singles from the times when #1 songs just sucked for months and months on end with positive hyperbole and excitement and not just dump on everything for twelve columns in a row? But then again, he gave “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” the same rating as "Picture", so nah.

Hearing him on tracks with genuinely talented rappers - so we can just stick with "Mo Money Mo Problems" and use Biggie as the example - is so painful and awkward.

Good luck, thanks for sharing. And Gigaton really is a joy, isn't it?

This "Everything's Right" is going deep as Hell for a studio cut!

I guess if you see them more than once you can come to that conclusion. I was ready to believe they were jamming hard at the Mann show last fall!

I was so looking forward to that Atlantic City run...

Something like that is what my friends and I are hoping for.

Seriously, such endless hater shade. Phish live is better than at least 98% of bands that this site gives love to. Not the same for studio work, of course.

I listened to Fuego a bit before the last time I saw them just to increase my familiarity with newer material. Even having gotten more into them the last handful of years, I would always be baffled by larger chunks of their setlist than I expected - partly because of super deep cuts and rarities, but more because of recent and side project stuff. There were a couple of solid studio cuts on there.

Post-War, Transistor Radio, Transfiguration of Vincent - all pretty brilliant.

I'm looking forward to this AotW. I'll also listen to the M. Ward even though I think he's put out three duds in a row over the past 11 years (the last one was a touch better than More Rain and A Wasteland Companion, but that's not saying a lot).

Dylan WAS the '60s lord of the diss track.

Ok, +Saint Cloud

Albums: Four Tet - Sixteen Oceans Pearl Jam - Gigaton Jay Electronica - A Written Testimony Greg Dulli - Random Desire Makaya McCraven/Gil Scott Heron - We're New Again R.A.P. Ferreira - Purple Moonlight Pages Songs: Tame Impala - "Is It True", "Breathe Deeper" Four Tet - "Teenage Birdsong" Jay Electronica - "Universal Soldier" Caribou - "Home" Greg Dulli - "The Tide" Haven't checked this new Waxahatchee yet.

D and Last Days of Summer in particular - serious gems.

I'm late answering but yes! Gigaton is really, really good! The slower tracks are cool, "Never Destination" rips, and even "Superblood Wolfmoon" sounds killer all of a sudden.

Of course the "Oops!... I Did It Again" write-up has more than four times the responses as this...and more than half of these are mine. :,-(

I'd say about a handful of songs off most of his later-period albums are strong. Don't love any of them front to back...but we've been lucky to get even 20 or so songs from him on that level.

All of Cee Lo's best stuff was pre-cancellation, wasn't it? I mean he turned in some towering performances - he and Badu take Outkast's "Liberation" to genuinely rarefied air. Fuck the date-raping son of a bitch, but he gave something special to some songs from the best of the concious music vanguard for a while before the worm turned.

I just read the write-up now - just want to again acknowledge/agree on the point of Dilla's impact. What makes the album special: 3. The great guest features 2. Common's excellent, consistent performance 1. The sheer depth of musicality and warmth instilled in it by Dilla, ?uest, and the production crew. The album just sounds BEAUTIFUL.

Such an amazing album. I stan for any of the Soulquarians' albums, but this is one of their best. When I was first getting into hip-hop after high school in like '02-'03 Common was one of the first rappers I got into, but around that time Electric Circus came out and got the lion's share of my love because it was more rock leaning. My coworker at FYE, who exposed me to a lot of the early rap I got into, burned me a copy of this and I spun it a few times, fell in love with "The Light", and thought I got what I needed from it. I went on to adore Be when it came out before falling off on Common in the back end of the 2Ks. But good god, when I went back and revisited it a few years ago I realized I had done myself a disservice by not really getting to know and love Like Water for Chocolate. I wasn't ready for it when I was 19, at least not with its showier, rockier sequel to also process. But these days - here is why Dilla was amazing. Here is Common in his platonic ideal. Here is the Soulquarian sound applied to hip hop to near perfection along with Things Falling Apart (Voodoo & Mama's Gun of course being the idealized neo-soul versions). My favorite rap albums are Aquemini, Liquid Swords, and Game Theory, but if you asked me to pin down what I want from hip-hop it could easily be communicated by this, TFA, Fantastic Vol. 2, Electric Circus, and Phrenology (and sure, throw in Black on Both Sides and Amplified for good measure).

"Words" never gets any love, cool stuff. Somehow this is the first I'm hearing about these performances.

Add Violence is so under-loved. My favorite conventional-NIN-music release since The Fragile. Bad Witch was really good, too.

Womp.

That was pretty awesome! One of their best in a while.

Almost certainly (?) the most mean-spirited, nasty album to earn that honor...but not without some all-time bangers.

This cooks!

Maybe it will get that treatment live. Like how "Do the Evolution" is slower and heavier on Yield but faster, leaner, and fiercer live.

Even the Vegas money?

I thought "A Christmas Fucking Miracle" off of the first one was already plenty emotionally resonant. I also think the first album is the best, as great as 2 also is.

Avalanches up next, perhaps?

My current AotY.

I say that last part with The Book of Ryan having been in my like Top 5 of 2018.

The Nation of Islam stuff still rubs me wrong, and while I had to get used to that with a lot of classic rap from the '80s and '90s it feels a bit worse coming now....but I dunno, I'm not black? It's always been a bit weird to fit my head around how these guys I thing are pretty on point about a lot of topics and sometimes seem like cool guys go so in on the Nation and Farrakhan in particular, which...I don't care for. But anyway, what I really wanted to say is the album is growing on me with each listen and both main MC's sound great on it. And even with the Farrakhan stuff, it's not as awkward as that new Royce album.

I think it was that or nothing, for whatever that's worth.