This a 4 on Sputnik Music
I am supposed to like this album. People voted and gave this a fucking 4 on Sputnik music. And plus, one of my favorite bands of recent experience, Spanish Love Songs, just did a kick-ass cover of her song funeral. Another band I discovered through Sputnik because they had a 4.
But once again, as it often happens with Rotten Tomatoes as well, seeing a number or percentage attached to an album immediately detracts from the overall work itself. I am much too distracted by what everyone else thinks to actually pay complete attention to the work.
I should like this. I like Julien Baker. Perhaps a little too much, but I like Julien Baker. She’s got a few really good songs and some pretty good songs. Nothing great, but how many musicians actually ever do achieve any level of greatness? Not many.
Yet with Phoebe, I really want to like her. The album starts off so solidly. It took me a day to get past the first song. Seriously; I didn’t want to explore the rest of the album. I felt content just sitting there. And funeral, that’s a great song as well. But there are so many instances in the album where I swayed my head back and forth a few times, yet nothing really stuck out to me. And perhaps that’s the whole point of the album? The whole, unstickoutedness of it.
It might just be a foray into the quiet, 4 AM moments of life: guitar strumming, hushed melodies, TV infomercials bleeding in the background, the dread of waking up at 2 PM in the afternoon again, the tiredness that is so pronounced it is almost energizing, the brain fog and clarity that comes in waves, and the early-morning drive-backs from god-knows-where LA.
Whatever the intent, I feel like I understand enough to pick up what she communicating. But because Julien Baker’s lyrics are much more relatable, I suppose she will always win out.
I’ll stick with Julien Baker.
Bibliotropism 