The Scroll Album Reviews: January 2021 — May 2021
By Camden Maggard
Welcome to the second installment of The Scroll’s music review column, where we review the newest albums and EPs. If you have any albums you would like to see reviewed in this column, DM @thesunsetscroll on Instagram!
Chemtrails Over the Country Club | Lana Del Ray | Pop, Americana | Spotify
Rating: 6/10. Lana Del Ray’s follow up to the widely acclaimed Norman Fucking Rockwell! is even more subdued and melancholic than its predecessor. The album thrives on soft vocal harmonies, and the presence of percussion is minimal when it exists at all: on “Tulsa Jesus Freak,” a quiet drum beat keeps the time, and on opener “White Dress” the occasional cymbal is played. This causes the songs to flow together quietly, creating a melancholic album that is as muted as it is listenable. By coming close to fully discarding the polished country-pop sound that shot Del Ray to fame with albums like Ultraviolence, Chemtrails is able to create a new brand of Americana-influenced pop much more nuanced than its predecessors. Is it as good as NFR? No, but that doesn’t change the fact Chemtrails is still a consistent pop album that will sit alongside it comfortably in her discography.
Daddy’s Home| St. Vincent| Indie, Pop, Soul| Spotify
8/10. If MASSEDUCTION was Annie Clark’s deep-dive into the glossy pop sounds of the 21st century, Daddy’s Home really isn’t all that different conceptually: it just focuses on a different time period, the 70’s, giving the album more of a theatrical styling. The album is also far mellower than anything Clark released in the 2010’s — outside of a few tracks, such lead single “Pay Your Way in Pain,” a funk-influenced pastiche of campy 70’s cultural influences, most songs are laid-back and organic sounding. However, despite having a clear historical influence, the songs on Daddy’s Home never fail to sound like St. Vincent: Clark’s arty melodies and fuzz-layered guitar lines still drive the record, and the extensive 70’s influence feels applied in such a way that album feels modern and forward-thinking rather than nostalgic.
The Future Bites | Steven Wilson | Synth-Pop | Spotify
Rating: 6/10. I first listened to this album with high expectations: ever since Steven Wilson released his first solo album in 2008, his work has been challenging and consistently strong at every turn—The Raven Who Refused To Sing is a highlight of his progressive rock output, and 2015's Hand Cannot Erase was arguably one of the best releases of the last decade regardless of genre. While The Future Bites is very different from these releases, it does still contain a lot of the same elements that made the aforementioned albums so successful. The pseudo synth-pop of the album doesn’t quite gel at times: Wilson attempts to infuse robotic sounds into his music and uses very highly produced R&B style vocals. However, when it works, the music is consistently strong and listenable. It’s hard not to compare Bites to Wilson’s earlier work, but perhaps that’s why the album has so often been panned— Wilson’s latest album is a pop record, and it should be approached as one. There’s a lot of strengths to the album — as always for Wilson, the instrumentation, which here mostly consists of synths, is highly structured and well produced. In isolation, many of the songs from the album are or would be excellent singles: the writing is strong and the production value is similarly consistent.
Promises | Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, London Symphony Orchestra| Ambient, Electronic, Jazz | Spotify
Rating: 5/10. A collaboration between the up-and-coming electronic musician Floating Points (Sam Shepard) and jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders isn’t what I expected to see in 2021, but it turns out that it’s exactly what I needed. The album, which forms a suite, carefully walks the line between slow-moving lyrical jazz (driven by Sanders), ambient Eno-like electronics, and modern orchestral arrangements, resulting in an album that, despite being hard to pin down, is rooted in musical tradition. The entirety of Promises is centered around one musical motif that lulls the listener, creating an ambient atmosphere perfect for relaxation or meditation; it’s pleasantly nuanced despite the monotony.
Medicine at Midnight | Foo Fighters | Alternative Rock, Power Pop | Spotify
4/10. Nirvana, but high on antidepressants. Where Kurt Cobain’s work was rooted in anxiety and self-reflection, Medicine at Midnight is utterly unaware of itself. The songs are catchy, fully developed, and highly produced — perfect for the radio or casual listening, even if it sounds a bit like it would be the soundtrack to a Cars movie.
Fearless (Taylor’s Version)| Taylor Swift| Pop | Spotify
6/10. It’s hard not compare the saccharine country-tinged pop of Taylor Swift’s newest album — which is a re-recording of her breakthrough 2008 album — to the original. But if one doesn’t make that comparison and listens to the new version in isolation, the album has arguably just as much merit as the original — the songs are produced with more space, and are equally as catchy as they were when released 13 years ago. Sure, it feels cliche at times, but that’s partly because the original release was so influential.
