293: RADWIMPS (B-)

RADWIMPS in tier list

this was a full two and a half weeks, with lots of hour+ length albums. I find that less than four albums and I have a hard time really getting a feel for the band as a band; more than eight and it turns into something of a slog. This definitely had periods that felt kinda sloggy, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that across the 14 albums and three days of singles and shorter records, I only really liked three. Nothing was bad, there was nothing wrong with them. I just kinda… I dunno, glazed off of them. I wanted to like them, kinda, and every once in a while there would be a song that made me feel like I was getting a peek into a version of the band that I liked a lot. But that song never really followed through all the way when it popped up, and another song like it wouldn’t pop up for another 10 songs. Across the board they averaged something like a 7/10, which is normally my cutoff where I start to call something a good album instead of a… not good album, I guess, an album I just don’t really care about at all. But these were 7/10s that I didn’t care about, 7/10s that I still wouldn’t wanna call “good albums”, not quite. Which is tough.

I should mention that there were three albums I did rather enjoy, that I wouldn’t give higher than, like, a 7.5/10, but that I would feel comfortable calling good albums. I’m not sure exactly why they felt that qualitative notch up, why they felt distinctly better, but they did. They were: Batsu to Maru to Tsumi To, Forever Daze, and Suzume. Suzume I think is particularly notable because it was one of their… I think four? One of their four movie soundtracks, and I didn’t particularly care for the other three. With the other three I felt like I might form some kind of connection to the music if I watched the movie, but without that I just had a hard time feeling attached, feeling the feelings I felt like the music was supposed to evoke. But for whatever reason I felt like Suzume was a big step up, I dug it. It was, unexpectedly, perhaps my favorite of all their albums, not just of their instrumental stuff. Who’d’a thunk.

I can’t give them an A-, I just was never attached to them in that way. I like them fine enough, though, and I think there were pretty clear spots where I distinctly enjoyed them instead of just… not minding them passing into my ears as a fairly pleasant bit of stimulus. All around, all things considered, I think a mid B- is appropriate

RADWIMPS complete, now listening to: PVRIS

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