‘Goodness’ starts with a fucking poem

-8

Picture the scene: you’ve returned home after a hard day investment banking and immediately retired to the smoking library. You’ve taken off your driving gloves, unclipped the ‘Shaguar’ cufflinks that were already painfully dated when your laundry maid got you them for Christmas years ago, thrown on your smoking jacket, lit up a Silver Vogue Lucky Strike and reclined in the leather push back ready to hear the new collection by young upstarts The Hotelier

+1

(erm, that’s honestly the record cover, I’m not just being weird…)

You are greeted by a nerdy and presumably privileged white guy explaining to you how he deserves your pity and attention because he once fell in a pond when he was younger. In a fucking poem

-10

You are enveloped by dismay, the world is terrible, people are shit and make shit music, despair is the only feeling that washes over you

-5

Then the first song starts…

+1

 

 

‘Goodness’ is the best rock album I’ve heard in years

+10

 

Initially ranked at the ridiculously low placing of 9^th (Ha! Fucking ridiculous…), ‘Goodness’ steadily climbs up the charts each time I listen to it, despite me hearing it roughly 56’875’446 times already. Each time I do, new wonders are unearthed, I somehow realise that tracks I already adored are even better than I remember, and the amount I fucking love this album is somehow increased tenfold

+10

Even this last time, when I revisited it again to mentally correlate my review of it, it was supposed to be in 5^th place, and I realised that even that was too low

+10

‘Goodness’ is an album of perfectly generated moments…

+10

 

There’s the aforementioned moment in Goodness Pt 2 when all the previously dissonant instrumentation manages to come together and you’re throwing your clothes off in joy; there’s the moment at the start of Piano Player where the vocals that were initially distant and clouded are suddenly crisp and intimate; that fucking drum* smash that introduces Two Deliverances; the aggressive WA-UH-WAH-U-WAH that slices through Settle the Scar; the glorious way that the acoustic interlude N 42° 6′ 3.001″ W 71° 55′ 3.295 segues into certified banger Soft Animal; Jesus, the entirety of Soft Animal is just…

 

*I don’t think I’ve ever heard drumming produced quite so bracingly as on ‘Goodness’. Sorry for all the big statements, but it’s one of the best produced records I’ve heard in a long time

+10

 

 

This is one of the greatest albums of recent times, and it’s just unlucky that 2016 saw the release of three of the greatest records ever

+10

 

 

God, I miss that moustache… Seriously though, I love this album

+10

 

Metacritic: +85

Length: 47 minutes

Like I’m taking any points off: the perfect length of this perfect album was obviously 47 minutes, and I can’t argue with that

Best Lyric: ‘Came into this world, daddy’s little girl/And daddy made a soldier out of me/Oh, oh, oh/Daddy made me dance and daddy held my hand/Oh, oh, oh/And daddy liked his whiskey with his tea’ +1

Number of AMAZING songs: 4 (+40)

Holy shit…

…But Are All the Rest of the Songs Kinda Amazing Anyway? Yes +500

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

Total: 2’741

https://thehotelier.bandcamp.com/