Whatever happened to... Maxwell?

i dunno i dont think its the same thing though. with maxwell its just that there are so many details & compositional crevices for u to discover
which is why 'stop the world' kinda doesnt work for me -- i dont feel like there's anything composed about it, its just so loose & unmoored

quik on the other hand was more pushing further & further your tolerance for weird

I kinda meant more that different people drastically gravitate to and away from different songs; no general consensus as to THE BEST or THE WORST

yah agreed w that

usually a sign of a good album

this albums grown on me but it doesnt seem quite as well written/developed as his stuff usually is.

ha, i just had the listen of 'Help Somebody' that opened it up to me. Itunes informs me it was #6 that did the trick.

i'm not as high on "pretty wings" as the rest of yall but it sounds SO GOOD on the radio. it's so different than anything being played, even with stuff like keyshia cole. i'm as big a backer of autotune & shit like "every girl" but i think we're gonna be alright if something like "pretty wings" can break to the top still.

"pretty wings" is really good but when he goes into his slurry soul-man vamps it sounds like "pret-ty WANGS" and i laugh every time...

me too! (as evidenced by my display name)

haha i didn't even notice that.

'pretty wings' sounded so slight when i first heard it, but is in fact...the opposite of slight. those quiet windchimes doing their thing so subtly. the entire album is secret sumptuousness.

everyone i work w/ loves it but the joke going around the ballpark is that the song is secretly called 'chicken wings.' big lols

"Help Somebody" and "Stop The World" are fantastic.

i like this record a lot — the second half sounds way less composed/arranged, and i kind of wish at least one of those was stretched out a bit more — but it's hard not to like it, still. particularly when he asks the girl to call the president. that is sweet.

i love pretty wings but he sings in *just* high enough of a register that i cant quite hit all the notes when i sign along, its pretty annoying

god if i judged R&B based on what notes i can actually (pretend to) hit!

sudden weird insight into why people like records w/bad singing

Haha

Seein' him and Common at the Hollywood Bowl tonight.

Pretty f-in' pumped.

ive heard incredible things about his live show

Expect lots of wangs, tbh.

This might be my album of the year.

yeah man its up there for me too

ive heard incredible things at his live show

def in my top 3

Got drunk. Wish I hadn't. Made for an interesting morning. Now at office, wishing I were still at Hollywood Bowl, last night, before the wine started flowing. Ugh.

Uh...but was the show any good?

The show was phenomenal. Highly recommended.

This record is amazing but I have next to nothing to actually say about it. Still, this is the shit.

50 quid for a london ticket.

i cant go :(

the musicians on this album are so fuckin good

like it is such a pleasure to hear session dudes in a non-sucky context just doing their thing

I feel as if this is the most slept-on universally acclaimed album of 2009.

yeah i think the length and the fact that it's an unusually understated "comeback" album cause that, tho i can't decide myself whether it's more "great" or more "really fucking good"

I never felt like Maxwell's critical rep was that high, though. Certainly not compared to D'Angelo or Badu.

im still not sure what happened to his sense of melody (sounds much more radio R&B influenced) here but this album is great. didnt blow me away as a 'comeback' album when i first got it, but its a solid grower. and yeah, the playing on it is fantastic.

everyone i work w/ loves it but the joke going around the ballpark is that the song is secretly called 'chicken wings.' big lols

― butthurt (deej), Monday, August 17, 2009 4:35 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol forgot abt this

this album doesn't have a sense of melody?

wtf

...?

Another argument for having year-end polls in like August of the following year.

i love whatever instrument it is thats used at the start of pretty wings.

i believe it's an instrument called the gamelan, from indonesia (where i'm living) they're kinda like tuned mini gongs, usually grouped in 8 or 10 and lined up in a scale. it sounds to me like maybe it's the javanese brand of gamelan (as opposed to balinese or sundanese, which have slightly different microtunings) me and some indonesian rap dudes i hang with have sat around several times trying to determine if it's a loop from a gamalan cd or a producer playing it on a sampler - on one hand that intro sounds very much like the instruments are generally played live to me, but listening closely i can hear melody lines with just one gamelan playing coming in and out later on in the song, so i guess it's probably just samples. but i'm thinking the guy playing them has heard a gamelan record or two, he's got the style down well enough to have fooled me at first, and i listen to shitloads of gamelan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAumC4JP3o&feature=related

man pretty wings is just so damn... pretty! and serious staying power, in this age of easy all-you-can-listen-to downloads 99.9% of everything i download only gets a single listen from me, maybe 2 if it's my favorite artist or something... but this one keeps popping up on my stereo a LOT. hell, i just listened to it 4 times in a row reading this thread!

just re-listened to this recently. the first four tracks are so amazing and i think "why don't i listen to this all the time?!" then the second half is like "oh yeah, huh".

i'm so ready for a new album from this band, but it seems like his momentum has slowed down a bit?

isnt this meant to be part of a trilogy?

"this album doesn't have a sense of melody?"

his sense of melody has *changed*, not disappeared.

iirc he had 3 albums' worth of material in the can over the long break, although I dunno if that means the other albums are totally done or if he's continued to work on them. the 2nd was initially going to be released less than a year later, but i think the 1st did so well that he's just riding it out with as many singles and tours as he can and it looks like the next one's pushed back to 2011.

i haven't listened enough to his earlier stuff to really compare, but the last album's melodies didn't sound especially different from before, or closer to other stuff on the radio.

if anything, i feel like there's ~more~ of a focus on melody than on his previous albums

^^^ yup

I listened to the album this morning thanks to this thread, and, yup: it's still my favorite album of 2009.

"pretty wings" is really good but when he goes into his slurry soul-man vamps it sounds like "pret-ty WANGS" and i laugh every time...

― flying squid attack (tipsy mothra), Monday, August 17, 2009 1:07 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark

Whatever happened to....Samwell?

http://answers.encyclopedia.com/question/did-robert-maxwell-die-296910.html

evan r. linked this to me on twitter just now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62c2oTTSLJM