Joy as an Act of Resistance

Pushes the boundaries of the genre in interesting ways.

The production alone is worth the listen, but the songwriting elevates it further.

Every generation has a handful of perfect albums. This is one of them.

A very cohesive listen. The sequencing is particularly impressive.

Ambitious and mostly successful. A couple of missteps keep it from true perfection.

Came to this late and wish I'd found it sooner. The way it balances experimentation with accessibility is remarkable — it never dumbs things down but it never alienates you either. Every listen reveals something I missed before. Absolutely essential.

The instrumentation is gorgeous throughout. Really well produced.

I slept on this for way too long. A friend kept recommending it and I kept putting it off, and now I feel like I wasted years not having this in my life. The songwriting is remarkably assured — these aren't the kind of hooks that grab you immediately and then fade. They're the slow-burn kind that embed themselves in your brain and only get stronger over time. The production deserves a lot of credit too. It's detailed without being cluttered, polished without being sterile. There's a warmth to the sound that makes it feel alive and breathing. A few tracks could have been trimmed but honestly that's a minor complaint about an excellent record.

I've been thinking about what makes certain albums transcend their era and become genuinely timeless. It's not just great songwriting or innovative production, though this has both in abundance. It's something harder to define — a sense of inevitability, like these songs had to exist in exactly this form. Nothing feels like it could be different. The more I listen, the more I appreciate the restraint shown here. There are moments where a lesser artist would have overplayed their hand, added another layer, pushed the dynamics further. But every choice here serves the song. It's maximalist and minimalist at the same time somehow. An extraordinary achievement that I think will still be revered in fifty years.

Not quite their best work but honestly that's a high bar. This is still a fantastic album by any reasonable standard. The songwriting is sharp, the sound is distinctive, and it's got great replay value.