The ‘Lanches are a shining example of why

Dull, ordinary music- like, for instance literally every terrible album in your collection apart from ‘Carry On Up the Charts: The Best of the Beautiful South’, which is awesome- pays slavish attention to its past, retreading each tired beat and trope that have been perfected and artistically concluded years ago, reasoning that these tricks were celebrated in the past and so the safe option would be just to echo past glories as a cheap route to success

-2

Good music is knowledgable of the tropes and tricks of its genre, but builds upon them and perfects the performance of them in a way that still manages to sound fresh and new: ‘Teens of Denial‘ is just* an indie album but reinvigorates the sound so absolutely you forget that it’s merely white guys with guitars again

+23

 

 

*Thought about putting quotation marks around ‘just’ then, but…

…

…

 

The very best music does one of two things. Either it presents something the listener has never heard before and introduces a completely new stance on the artform itself, which is why Zeal & Ardor is probably the greatest album of 2016, even though it’s currently residing in 84^th place

+84

 

Or, it is aware of past successes in music, and takes influences from everything and build them all together to build something that sounds at once a perfection and an evolution of the artform. It’s why Tribe Called Quest are brilliant, it’s why Rihanna is brilliant, it’s why Kanye West is (often) brilliant, it’s why Andrew Bird is brilliant and, yes, it’s why Bowie’s hissy cry of attention was brilliant

+38

It’s the reason music is better now than it’s ever been, because we have more works of genius in the past to take inspiration from. So, music is precisely 20 years better than it was in the 90s, 30 years better than the eighties, 60 years better than the 50s and a whopping 190 years better than the 1820s!

+30

If you don’t agree, then you don’t believe in evolution and are practically a Young Earth Creationist: go complain to Donald Trump about how you’re not allowed to call a spade a spade and beat niggers with it any more

-4

 

The Avon Lanches are the most naked

representation of this glorious evolution, as their music is literally and solely comprised of ingenious and cunningly intertwined samples. The sound is so gorgeously logical that you trust that the reason it took them 8 years to make their 2^nd album is simply because that’s how long it takes to incorporate so many disparate sounds and make them sound this beautiful

+28

Oh, and to clear all the samples, I suppose…

-1

OK, yeah, listen, right?: ‘Wildflowers’ opens sounding intentionally tinny and under produced, designed to momentarily make the listener believe the album is a disappointing and crudely mixed rush-job, before exploding into a gorgeous soundscape. Well, Guns ‘n’ freaking Roses did the exact same trick on Better, the opening track of their much delayed ‘Chinese Democracy’, but nobody gave a shit! Have

10 Guns ‘n’ Roses Points

 

 

I fucking hate the noise people make when they eat…

-21

 

Metacritic: +83

Length: 59 minutes,

but I’m not docking any points, as the album never drags

Best Lyric: ‘Can’t you see there’s no other man above you?/What a wicked way to treat the girl that loves you’ +1

Number of AMAZING songs: 1.8 (+18)

Saturday Night Inside Out is so almost there

…But Are All the Rest of the Songs Kinda Amazing Anyway?

Ooooooooh, yesyesyes

+100

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total: 478

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