It's been awhile, damn. Its not much, but here is the review of Atmosphere I wrote for Metro.Pop.
Artist: Atmosphere
Album: When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold.
Label: Rhymesayers
Release Date: 4.22.08
First thing – WHERE ARE THE ANT BEATS??? They aren’t there! I was initially furious, because Ant’s beats and Slug’s words go together like cocaine and conversation. Instead, Slug sketches his painful characters over mostly-live instrumentation, which ends up being a good move. Breaking their formula (Tom Waits and Tunde Adebimpe show up to help) gives Atmosphere a chance to grow and progress…which is a good thing…even after all my pissing and moaning (the call of a true Atmosphere fan).
POSTSCRIPT: Alright, so maybe you can tell I didn't want to like this. Maybe you can tell I kind of hated it. Initially. As far as I am concerned though, if Atmosphere wants to do some new style shit, let 'em. They already gave us the Atmosphere album everyone wanted to hear for free with 'Strictly Leakage'... and if that wasn't enough, there was some damn good Atmosphere spread across the four 'Sad Clown Bad [Season]' EP's that came out. So, that being said, with all of that solid music out there, Slug and Ant gave themselves enough breathing room to try some new shit. Did it all work? No, but they've put in their time and I'm more than happy to let them go ahead and grow a little.
Atmosphere - Shoulda Known
Atmoshpere - Not Another Day (Live on The Current 4.21.08)
The Current is the shit by the way. It makes me proud to be from Minnesota.
Sorry about the hiatus, friends, look out for a Cool Kids feature, an exclusive interview, and more general rambling in the near future.
Have a great day.
6 comments:
The current is seriously the best radio station ever.
So proud to be a Minnesotan.
The new Atmosphere is pretty terrible in my opinion - but I do agree, I'm glad they're taking chances and growing. They release an obscene amount of material every year - like you said, they can afford to have some of it miss the mark entirely.
New Opeth is where it's at...did you listen to it yet?
I do really dig "Dreamer", "Painting" , "Yesterday", "Puppets" and "The Skinny."
Can't fucking stand "You", Shoulda Known" and "Your Glass House."
Terrible hooks..like some of the worst ever.
The rest of the album is mediocre in my opinion. I guess I like more of it than I thought...and it's growing on me, slowly.
I will never be able to listen to those annoying hook songs again though.
Well Said Hose.
And yeah, the new Opeth, I actually listened to about 20 seconds of one track and it moved me...which is weird to say but true.
I fucking love the current too. Someone give those guys a medal.
I hated "the skinny" by the way....
can't we all just hate atmosphere uniformly!?
Fine. It is agreed. We all hate atmosphere...i mean...its kind of our job since we are from Minneapolis.
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