WEEKLY ALBUM RECAP #10/11 -- and on the fourth week he rose (PART 1)

YOU'VE BEEN INVITED TO THE TOWN PLAY!

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

me asf

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

they're calling this the worst comeback of all time. writing is fun until i have to do it [2]. anyway get ready for this quadruple dipper

this is part 1 of me catching up to the weeks i missed. spacehey was being evil and deleting my updates so i split this into two posts, this covers 2/8-2/21.

part 2 is here! :3

as a refresher - italicized tracks are interludes, bolded tracks are my standouts (a.k.a. a 4.5 or higher),  a ★ indicates my favorite song, and an × indicates my least favorite song

(p.s. clicking on an album cover it'll take you to some more info about the album on rateyourmusic)

i present my rating system, THE SANDWICH SCALE

★★★★★ - toasted meatball sub / all-timer

★★★★½ - taylor ham egg and cheese / love

★★★★ - loaded with toppings / great

★★★½ - a nice flatbread / might order again if i'm in the mood

★★★ - a little soggy / average + good moments

★★½ - a little dry / average + boring

★★ - untoasted subway flatbread / pretty bad, mediocre at best

★½ - where are my toppings / quite bad

★ - finding an onion when i ordered no onion / all-time stinker

½ - peppers / i really fucking hate peppers

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

WEEK #10 -- catching up on new releases

what it sounds like. some interesting looking stuff has come out and i haven't listened to anything new from this year yet.

Preacher's Daughter - Ethel Cain | 2022

singer-songwriter | dream pop | slowcore

★★★★

"hey this didn't come out in 2025", i hear you saying. and you'd be right. but Perverts did come out this year and that's (technically) an ep and i wanted to listen to this first and also this is my blog i can do whatever i want. i don't think i'll be returning to this anytime soon, not out of a place of hate, but rather the opposite actually. Preacher's Daughter is not a breezy listen exactly - it absolutely feels like you're listening to an album that's over an hour long. in this way it takes up a lot of space, but it never overstays its welcome. the space it takes up feels warranted, it makes for an album that drags you down with it. that is simply not an experience i wish to have very often. but it's a testament to the craftsmanship behind this album. someday i will come back to this to really sit and digest more without distraction because this is definitely a "You have to listen to it more than once" thing. also obligatory holy shit Ptolemaea

i couldn't come up with a good line sorry

      tracklist

1. Family Tree (Intro)
   
2. American Teenager
3. A House in Nebraska
4. Western Nights ×
5. Family Tree
6. Hard Times
7. Thoroughfare ★
8. Gibson Girl
9. Ptolemaea
10. August Underground
11. Televangelism
12. Sun Bleached Flies
13. Strangers

Eusexua - FKA twigs | 2025

electronic dance music | art pop

★★½

i've heard twigs' other projects and i have concluded that they are overwhelmingly Just Okay. happy to report that this has not changed. a few snippets of the singles were all i had heard going in, people were saying they were great and i really wanted to go in blind and have this be the album that makes me like fka twigs. this isn't to say it was a bad experience but i find her flavor of experimental to be kind of boring. not to mention that the snippets of the singles i'd heard are just not what the album sounds like at all. i found myself moving along to these songs only to pretty much forget what i'd just heard by the time the next song was on. Eusexua came and went incredibly fast, leaving practically no footprint behind, and i think that's deserved. in a catalog of 3★s, it makes little effort to stand out within it. Striptease is a fucking banger tho

for people who thought listening to 100 gecs in 2020 made you really cool

      tracklist

1. Eusexua
2. Girl Feel Good
3. Perfect Stranger
4. Druma of Death
5. Room of Fools
6. Sticky
7. Keep It, Hold It
8. Childlike Things
9. Striptease ★
10. 24hr Dog ×
11. Wanderlust

Louder, Please - Rose Gray | 2025

dance pop | house

★★★½

> fun dance album

> look inside

> 3.26

it isn't the most unique album ever made and if you're going into this expecting that you'll be disappointed. Louder, Please is everything it needs to be - it's fun and catchy and you can dance to it.

for people who need a brat lite

      tracklist

1. Damn
2. Free ×
3. Wet & Wild
4. Just Two
5. Tectonic
6. Party People
7. Angel of Satisfaction ★
8. Switch
9. Hackney Wick
10. First
11. Everything Changes (But I Won't)
12. Louder, Please

choke enough - Oklou | 2025

alt-pop | electronic

★★½

do you know how fucked up you gotta have me for my 2nd favorite song on your album to have a bladee feature? there's very little variation, which is why the two features, take me by the hand ft bladee and harvest sky ft underscores, are my favorites - it's the only variation on the entire thing. harvest sky is easily the best moment on the album and i don't just say that because i love underscores. choke enough is very slow for what it is and harvest sky acts as a much needed uobeat moment with the monumentous addition of a constant, fast paced drum beat. if one of the other songs had that, i wouldn't know the rest of it wasn't interesting enough for me to pay attention. considering harvest sky is the longest song on the album this is very welcome although also considering it's the longest song on the album i wish there was just a little more underscores. the holy addition of a good drum returns on blade bird, which means nothing because it's the closer. all that said, i can't give it below a 2.5 because while it all sounds the same, it's not a bad sound.

for people who thought listening to billie eilish when she was in her edgy era made you really cool

      tracklist

1. endless
2. thank you for recording ×
3. family and friends
4. obious
5. ict
6. choke enough
7. (;´༎ຶٹ༎ຶ`)
8. take me by the hand
9. plague dogs
10. forces
11. harvest sky ★
12. want to wanna come back
13. blade bird

Violation.Strife.Abominate - Revenge | 2025

war metal

★★★½

"what the fuck is war metal", you're probably asking. the real answer is it's basically a combination of death metal, first wave black metal, and grindcore. the funny answer is that this is somehow the most comprehensible metal experience i've ever had, i genuinely really enjoyed this. yes it has my "it all sounds like the same song" problem but i don't mind it as much here because that sound is good. given that the genre is  called war metal and using other context clues i'm going to assume this album is about war but i cannot be bothered to decipher.

for ww2 buffs

 

      tracklist

1. Violation Unit (Balaclava Directive)
2. Treason Disrupt (All Are Guilty)
3. Flashpoint Heretic (Flame Thrown)
4. Strife Invocation
5. Revelation Emaciated (Chalice Abominate) ★
6. Mercy Revoked
7. Piety Vaporized (True Force)
8. Shockwave Iconoclast
9. Last Resort
10. Aftermath (Forced Reset) ×
11. Liars' Rope (Degeneracy Fallen)
12. Swine Tumult (On All Fours)

Cowards - Squid | 2025

post-rock | art rock | experimental rock

★★★★

i usually don't listen to singles so i can get the full first listen experience when an album drops and it was so hard to do that for this but it was soo worth it. squid almost always gets overlooked in conversations regarding the windmill scene in favor of bands like black midi and black country new road, but they absolutely deserve to be in the conversation more. people who were attached to squid purely for their post-punk origins probably won't get much out of Cowards, as it continues in the artsy direction they took with O Monolith, but i might even like this more than the post-punk stuff. ollie judge's vocals are what have always made squid stand out to me, perhaps not as immediately unique as someone like windmill peer geordie greep but i'm not here to pit two beautiful queens against each other. point is he still sounds great, as much as i love his shrieking on other squid material i really love the more relaxed approach he takes here. i love squid haha yayy!!!

for people who need to be correct about everything all the time

      tracklist

1. Crispy Skin ★
2. Building 650
3. Blood on the Boulders
4. Fieldworks I ×
5. Fieldworks II
6. Cro-Magnon Man
7. Cowards
8. Showtime!
9. Well Met (Fingers Through the Fence)

Birna - Wardruna | 2025

neo-pagan folk | dark folk

★★★½

felt like i was being sacrificed. would recommend

for those tiktok viking guys

      tracklist

1. Hertan
2. Birna
3. Ljos til jord
4. Dvaledraumar
5. Jord til ljos ×
6. Himinndotter
7. Hibjørnen
8. Skuggehesten ★
9. Tretale
10. Lyfjaberg

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

WEEK #11 -- soo la voo, or whatever

i just went and picked some stuff from my backlog

Smog - Dug Dug's | 1972

psychedelic rock | acid rock | heavy psych

★★★

yeah it's 70s psych rock. do you know what that sounds like? then you know what this sounds like.

i mean yeah if you like 70s psych rock

      tracklist

1. Smog
2. Búscalo
3. Hagámoslo ahora (2a. parte) ★
4. Yo no sé
5. ¿Cuál es tu nombre? ×
6. Meditación
7. No somos malos
8. Voy hacia el cielo (Voy hacia el Sol)

W - Gacharic Spin | 2023

shimokita-kei

★★★★

the bass on this album is absolutely killer, i love me some slap bass it will always immediately win my heart. tldr; it's j-pop with a slap bass yeah it's good. i found myself liking this for a lot of the same reasons i like sheena ringo, with this of course being on the much tamer, less-experimental side. it's explosive and fun, and the rest of this entry has been deleted 3 times by spacehey and i forgot what i had here

for arcane fans. just the aura idk

      tracklist

1. レプリカ
2. The Come Up Chapter
3. カチカチ山
4. Rabbithole
5. ロンリーマート ×
6. Kirakirai
7. Voice
8. Live Every Moment ～ヒトヨバナ～
9. ナンマイダ
10. リバースサイコロジー ★

Speak for Yourself - Imogen Heap | 2005

art pop | indietronica | glitch pop

★★★½

so unbelieveably ahead of its time i cannot properly formulate a sentence to explain it. unfortunately cannot listen to Hide and Seek without laughing.

for cookie run fans. again i can't explain it that's just the aura

      tracklist

1. Headlock ★
2. Goodnight and Go
3. Have You Got It in You?
4. Loose Ends
5. Hide and Seek
6. Clear the Area
7. Daylight Robbery
8. The Walk
9. Just for Now
10. I Am in Love With You
11. Closing In ×
    
12. The Moment I Said It

Pencere Önü Çiçeği - Fikret Kızılok + Bülent Ortaçgil | 1986

singer-songwriter | contemporary folk

★★★½

i mean yeah it's folk music

for people who like those millennial exposed brick fairy lights Just Two Guys With a Crazy Dream restaurants

      tracklist

1. Olmasın Varsın
2. Değirmenler
3. Güneşin Aynasında
4. Uyusun da Büyüsün
5. Bir Nihavend Yalnızlık
6. Pencere Önü Çiçeği ×
7. Entellektüel
8. Şarkıdaki Maymun ★

S.F. Sorrow - The Pretty Things | 1968

psychedelic rock | rock opera

★★★★

predictably, it's the classic 60s pop sound, but there's some neat stuff going on. it being a rock opera intrigued me, though i wasn't able to pick up on the story on first listen. while i'd say most people have probably heard something like this these days, for its time this feels very ambitious. s.f. sorrow simultaneously indeniably takes beatles/the kinks inspirations while also sounding years ahead.

for guy who's only ever heard the beatles: "getting a lot of beatles vibes from this"

      tracklist

1. S.F. Sorrow Is Born
2. Bracelets of Fingers
3. She Says Good Morning
4. Private Sorrow
5. Balloon Burning
   
6. Death
7. Baron Saturday
8. The Journey ×
9. I See You
10. Well of Destiny
11. Trust
12. Old Man Going ★
13. Loneliest Person

Really From - Really From | 2021

math rock | midwest emo

★★

snooze fest. hypothetically something i would love, math rock + emo + jazz rock, but i have never heard a combination of 3 interesting genres turn out so boring. Apartment Song is pretty good, makes you excited for the rest of the album, and that's exactly why this left such a sour taste in my mouth. clearly they know how to write a good song, so why didn't they? i don't mind the female vocalist at all but i hate the guy i really hate him. someone said he sounds like kermit the frog and i can't disagree. it's not in a charming way. i love a horn on a rock song, not even that makes me like it. i have never been so underwhelmed by any album ever

for the worst guy you know at a party

      tracklist

1. Apartment Song ★
2. Quirk
3. Yellow Fever
4. Try Lingual
5. I Live Here Now
6. Last Kneeplay
7. I'm From Here ×
8. In the Spaces
9. The House

Tabula rasa - a whole lot of people | 1984

holy minimalism

★★★½

it sure is classical music. i'm not smart enough to like classical but this seemed interesting and i've heard a lot of good things about it. i will say i wrote the FUCK out of an essay while listening to this so. take that how you will

for locking in

      tracklist

1. Fratres ★
2. Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten ×
3. Fratres
4. Tabula rasa

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

GO READ PART 2!!!

remember that if you have any suggestions for albums i should check out, you can leave them here!

thanks for reading (´ ω `♡)