The purpose built next generation interstellar Dawn Richard thread

k3vin otm. I listened to that exact sequence on my commute the other day. In general I think this is best heard in smaller chunks.

back end, excepting the title track, feels weak to me

She put up two new songs on her Soundcloud page a couple of days ago:

https://soundcloud.com/dawn_richard

Weird how everyone takes home different things from this album, because I still think the back end is by far the strongest section.

Kevin's selection is great though (although I love Break of Dawn and 86 as well). Sequencing on this album is kind of bad though, I like Frequency and Warfaire but you really don't need Tug of War AND Ode To You after them, I can barely remember what the latter two sound like within minutes of having listened to them, so the overall effect is just of a glut of the same type of song.

I wish they had a better editor though, listening to this as a whole I'm reminded of rock bands on their third or fourth album who are so keen to appear 'epic' or 'important' they lose some of the spark that made them great in the first place.

This is another album where everyone disagrees on which are the great tracks, which are middling and which should be culled (except perhaps for "Frequency" which seems to have consensus support). Clearly the problems are more structural than song-specific.

I might be the only person who prefers Warfaire to Frequency, I was kind of bemused as to why people were so down on the former a few weeks ago. The problem that structure won't solve is the heavy-handedness of some of the bangers.

(NB the main question that's been running through my head throughout this thread is 'would Lex like Game of Thrones?')

Haha now I also will obsess over this question.

I feel at least Lex would be sympathetic to the trials and tribulations of Daenerys.

What is Game of Thrones? If it's TV, I don't watch TV

not sure thrones' t&a level would get past lex's rap internet chauvinism policing

You mean it wouldn't be high enough?

I'd hesitate to say this album wouldn't exist were it not for Game of Thrones, because Dawn's nerding out spectrum is far far broader than that, but maybe not in quite the same form.

Dawn needs some baby dragons.

Ha ha - you know she knows it too.

Glad other people like Warfaire. One of my favorites as well. Along with Return of a Queen, 86, Frequency, Northern Lights.

"86" is still the only song on this I love :/

'ode to you' still knocks hardest for me. like i mean actually too, it's a powerful lowkey headbanger

i really love that natural-mechanical washing machine rhythm swaying under it, like it has this inverted musique concrete steez where tying pure sound back to the world of things gives it a philosophical realness, a sense of life's drift

of course alternatively you could hear it as dawn pausing for thought before some 19th c steampunk contraption in a desert-hot western prairie

"oh ain't nobody like you that's why i fux with you baby" hits so hard i can't even really describe, just sweeps all circumspection aside

i totally forgot about that ldn gig last month, lex did u attend

also teedra last week :/

i should really get out the house sometime

"'86" also the only song I love, though the three-song stretch from it to "Break of Dawn" is the only part where listening to this album doesn't make me feel antsy.

I don't mean this question to be as loaded as it probably seems, but does anybody here like this album more than Armor On?

me, maybe

i do, by a damn sight.
basically i can do the intro up to ode to you anytime and i've pretty much blocked 86/in your eyes/break of dawn/300
the gabriel cover is particularly :/ for me

I don't even prefer this to Whiteout tbh.

I don't mean this question to be as loaded as it probably seems, but does anybody here like this album more than Armor On?

― Evan R, Friday, March 8, 2013 10:12 AM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah me too

armor on = tell tale heart > goldenheart >>>>> whiteout

but whiteout was just a lil whatever thing anyway so v unfair to even rank in company

I get the feeling I'm the only one here who likes Whiteout as much as I do.

Tell Tale Heart was pretty minor imo -- i'm still a little amazed by the enthusiasm it inspired in this thread's genesis

I repped for whiteout too rev!

tell tale heart, you dont even know

tell tale heart was magnificent

tbh though the issue of appreciation that concerns me really is not where u rank goldenheart in dawn's oeuvre but in r&b and whatnot today generally

ie even if its tremendous reach may exceed its grasp there still aint no reason for brattish mewling

i totally forgot about that ldn gig last month, lex did u attend

also teedra last week :/

i should really get out the house sometime

― r|t|c, Friday, March 8, 2013 2:14 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

having been out of the house all day today let me reassure you there is literally no earthly reason right now to leave it, ever. fucking disgusting out there

i did attend, anyway (and i also missed teedra) - it was just a lil 4-song showcase and we had to sit through a million TERRRRIBLE wannabes before dawn because no one could tell me what time she was on. she's coming back in april for proper full gigs i believe. also when she came over she was really ill (i interviewed her earlier that day and she couldn't even get through that without throat sweets) - huge trooper kudos for getting through just 4 songs

lol "throat sweets" http://i.imgur.com/6L9JtP2.gif?1

lmao

- ranking within dawn's oeuvre seems nitpicky to me. each of her mixtapes/EPs/albums to date have been exactly what they needed to be in the context of each other. i like them all, some days some better than others. as rtc says, the remarkable thing, the thing i am in awe of, is where she stands vis-a-vis the rest of r&b/pop/everything. in that wider context, she's killing everyone and it isn't even a question.
- acknowledging that whiteout was just a tossed-off thing that probably wouldn't exist if she hadn't got a physical distro deal isn't to say it's bad or overlook it, but it's just how it is. (fwiw they weren't songs she already had lying around, she wrote and made them between the original goldenheart release date and december - so they're actually the most recent songs she's done)
- i really don't understand the "86"-only crew. "86" took time to grow on me in much the same way that "tug of war", "ode to you" and "break of dawn" did - the hooks aren't immediate and the beats aren't mindspinning so you have to feel your way into them. but both sound-wise and quality-wise it seems v much of a piece with those other midtempos in the back half of the album
- i love "warfaire" and don't get the hate; i love that the most (directly, specifically) confrontational lyrics on the album are paired with the gentlest music
- "return of a queen" is way underrated

you are all unhealthily obsessed with people being british

http://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwaugmoeb11qcseq1o1_500.gif

nicki gets it

(fwiw they weren't songs she already had lying around, she wrote and made them between the original goldenheart release date and december - so they're actually the most recent songs she's done)

I'd wondered about/had kinda assumed this.

re: "86" I'd already fallen in love with it and played the hell out of it months before the album came out. I still don't even really think about it in the context of the album, it's its own thing to me.

as rtc says, the remarkable thing, the thing i am in awe of, is where she stands vis-a-vis the rest of r&b/pop/everything. in that wider context, she's killing everyone and it isn't even a question.

YES

ha, it was just an amusing briticism xps

I can't rate her records but Goldenheart has been on repeat every time I do some cooking

"86" only really opened up to me in album context - the opening chords seem like so much space opening up following "ode to you" mechanistic beat

also, it's the only moment where she makes her debt to imogen heap a bit too obvious

my fav way of listening to goldenheart is still in one go, all the way through - sometimes i skip "pretty wicked things" just cuz i've heard it so much though

yeah i was just about to say glomming onto '86' by itself is pretty much a cop out cos you're basically just stranded where you were a few months back like the album never happened and was never engaged with

That's one of her songs that would least make me think of Imogen Heap! It's like the one song of recent vintage I can think of that's totally nailed that late-80s Jam & Lewis ballad sound.

I wouldn't say the album does a good job of making me want to engage with it tho.

And I'd already glommed onto "86" anyway. I put it in my top 5 of last year before I'd ever heard the album.

the vocal treatment on the second "was too closed off" is literally straight out of that imogen heap song

"Ode To You" is amazing, if you don't get it you have spurned Dawn's love, that's why I don't fux with you.

I agree that A Tell-Tale Heart is up there with her best work.