Because I’m feeling incredibly lazy today (more like stir crazy – sitting in front of my computer when it’s warm outside in February seems like a cruel punishment), I’ve decided my album review is going to be done Twitter style, in 140 characters or less.
Without further ado, the world’s shortest reviews:
Bon Iver: Really pretty tunes. I liked listening to acoustic versions of the songs on YouTube because I like being able to hear the unaltered vocals.
(140 characters exactly, in case you were wondering.)
36 Chambers: OK, I can’t do it. There’s just too much to talk about. I’ll try and be as succinct as possible.
I was (pleasantly) surprised by the amount of soul music samples on the tracks, which I learned was a new thing when this album was released, but I know to be pretty standard today in what little hip hop I’m familiar with. The first word I wrote down when I finished my first listen all the way through was “raw.” The production is raw, the lyrics are raw, the subject matter is intense. Tearz is only two verses, the first of which is RZA rapping about his little brother being shot and the second is the story of one of Ghostface Killer’s friends who contracted HIV.
Yes, there are lots of drug and violence references in the lyrics, but it doesn’t feel like they’re thrown in for shock value. They are stories that happen to deal with some really dark stuff, but some of the rhymes are hilarious: “Burn me, I get into shit, I let it out like diarrhea/Got burnt once, but that was only gonorrhea,” and “Ya gettin stripped from ya garments, boy, run ya jewels/While the meth got me open like falopian tubes,” are two of my favorites, mostly because “fallopian tubes” was not something I expected to hear on this album.
New album will be announced Monday!