The purpose built next generation interstellar Dawn Richard thread

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.

I think my problem with this album ultimately is that so much of it feels heavyhanded.

my problem with it is that it is a million years long

^^^

That is the dumbest criticism one can level at an album
Jesus
Pause it and finish it tomorrow you cretins

^

editing is important!

so is having an attention span

I get it, some albums overstay their welcome, and I love nice concise statements, but the "some songs could be trimmed" complaint is such bullshit. Trim them yourself, enrich your life, and may god forgive you for ever criticizing an artist for their generosity

"too long" is totally a valid criticism for albums, lots of records would work better if edited down a bit. this is an album where i think the sprawl works for it, though, especially since it's only right for it to be 20 minutes longer than her exceptionally long 'EP.'

the "generosity" argument made a little sense in the '90s when we were paying top dollar for CDs and there was some genuine thrill in getting one that was 79 minutes and a twinge of annoyance when it was 29 minutes. but i feel like one of actual good things about the changes since then is that there's a greater sense that running time should contribute to the listening enjoyment.

you're otm about the sprawl fitting it but at the same time it makes it hard to approach and concentrate on, which makes me never want to revisit it. guess i should get an attention span lol