The Useless Critic 2.0

There have only been a handful of albums in my life I've loved as much as "Norman Fucking Rockwell," Lana Del Rey's 2019 magnum opus produced by wunderkind producer and fun/Bleachers musician Jack Antonoff. To give you an idea of how much I fullheartedly loved that album, I really had stopped paying attention to LDR at this point. The period between "Honeymoon" and "NFR" Is a lost time for me. I've since gone back and revisited it, but while it was actually happening, I could have cared less. "NFR" was this album that BLEW me away on my first listen. I hadn't heard an album so cohesively good in a minute. I spent the rest of 2019 listening to "NFR," on bus trips and plane rides and nights at home, and half of my first quarantine listening to it, too. It powered me through that phase of my life - it just hit home with me, on a deep level where music rarely resonates anymore. And I would classify it as my favorite album of...

As most of you know, I've been extremely skeptical of Gwen Stefani's solo career the past several years. And the skepticism has only increased as time has gone on. I like to think Blake Shelton was the final kiss of death, but I will say her last album did have some surprisingly awesome cuts. And "Let Me Reintroduce Myself" is a grower, and the music video is truly endearing.  HOWEVER. Gwen's second single off her yet untitled upcoming album …. woof . It's called "Slow Clap" and it's meant to be a story of resilience. Maybe? Possibly? I don't know what to tell you about "Slow Clap." We all know that "the clap" is slang for a not-very-pleasant STI, and it seems like that's the closest thing Gwen achieves here. Even having "the clap" is infinitely more preferable than hearing this abomination of a song ever again. This isn't me trying to overexaggerate here. I have only been able to stomach listening to thi...

I'm not exactly sure how I never actually listened to the Nick Drake-influenced singer-songwriter Will Stratton before (which is especially strange considering his discography stretches six albums), but going forward I'm willing to correct that grievance on my part.  Only a few seconds into the lush, wistful, and absolutely gorgeous "Tokens" - calling to mind Iron & Wine at their best - hits the note Stratton was aiming for when composing it. Stratton recalls, "Tokens is a song addressed to the fraternal twins, the most frequent subjects of songs since songs were created: time and love. The afternoon that I was writing it, the weird weather we were having that summer was on my mind. I was thinking about how my perception of time is so tied to my perception of the changing seasons, and consequently, how my perception of time hasn't been quite as sharp as it once was. I was also thinking about the ending of one of my favorite movies, the 2014 Paul Thomas An...