This is low A- territory for me, and I can’t quite tell if it earned that solidly or if it kinda eked it out. A lot of the songs I don’t really love that much. They’re decent, but I think on their face I’d be inclined to put them in the B tier. But, I think Labes grew on me in the week I listened to him, and at this point it’d feel odd for him to not be an A-, because I do think I’d say that I like him as an artist.
Part of me feels like I should like even the meh songs more than I do. I dunno. It feels almost like parts of 297: Cody Fry (A-) to me, where it’s pop music that is competently put together in the style of pop music, and it’s not like it’s bad or sounds bad or anything, but something is missing, or off, or something. I dunno. But then, as Cody Fry has grown on me in the areas I knew he would, he’s also grown on me with a bunch of his pop stuff. I think maybe Philip Labes is similar in the structure of how I like him, though the high points of my enjoyment of Cody Fry are much higher than the high points of my enjoyment of Philip Labes.
But, I also think that even Philip Labes’ more mid stuff grew on me pretty quick, and I think his season albums are a pretty solid work altogether. Spring is a solid start. I think it keys up the rest of the seasons pretty well, and it has songs that I like. It also has some more stuff that feels like filler to me, or redundant, that misses. I think it’s the weakest of the four, though which means it gets better.
I think Summer is the most fun one. It’s not necessarily the deepest, or at least it doesn’t feel that way to me, but it has the most songs that I think are just good and enjoyable songs.
Autumn is what I would call the “best” one. It is playful and bright, even as it is still sad, even as it looks at loss and endings of things.
Winter is blatantly sad. It is sad in a way that makes sense to me. Which, I think that’s true for all of these albums, for all of his seasons. They very much are all different flavors of sadness. There are ups and downs, and some of the sadnesses are harsher than others, but they are all sadness and loneliness. It’s hard for me to not appreciate that, these days.
Frankly, I don’t really care about his non seasons stuff. It’s alright, and it’s still him in the same way, but I don’t think most of it works as well. There are good singles and stuff, no shade or anything against it, it just doesn’t really work to make me like him as an artist where his seasons albums did—those are the reason he’s an A- and not a B.
I didn’t like the musical. The music is… fine. I don’t love musicals for their own sake most of the time, and so I’m not particularly geared toward that style and arrangement, though I also don’t think I’m against it. I’d call this a pretty mid musical. Decent, but nothing special. Beyond the music, it just felt so much too much on the nose. It felt that way to the point of being cringe, but then maybe so much so that I thought being cringe was kinda part of the point and part of the meta commentary, but then at the end of the day it still just felt cringe in a way that was unenjoyable. But also, I’m not really counting it against him at all.
In conclusion: I like Labes. I like the vibes. I think he’s got a good number of songs that feel really real to me, that feel like they speak to an emotion and a kind of working through things and trying to process life and the sadness of it, in a way that I relate to right now. I think he’s a good songwriter who writes some fun songs. I think he also writes a lot of mid songs, but I also think that’s fine. It works out. A low A- feels right to me.
Philip Labes complete, now listening to: Rusted Root
