Drop 7 - Little Simz
★★★☆☆

Making a 14 minute album should be illegal in so many different ways, but I will give her a review anyways because I loved it. This album kind of felt like the equivalent of watching a Chopped episode. Little Simz opened up a basket in the studio every day and they said, "Today you need to make a song with three jars, seven marbles, a half eaten bag of Nerd Gummy Clusters, and a parakeet. Go." And she did just that. I really enjoyed the experimental vibes of it all, I really enjoy anything that feels different and unique & this definitely delivered on those. WAY different than anything else I've heard from her, which I love. I just don't think I'll come back and revisit because it's so short and definitely feels stronger in the first half and slowly gets weaker as it goes on.

Fave Songs: Mood Swings, Fever, & Torch

Older - Lizzy McAlpine
★★★★☆

I had to sit on this one for a minute because it really was such a drastic departure from her second album which was honestly one of my favorite albums of all time, but I think with time I just have to remember that her music style has always kind of been girl sitting on a stool with a guitar. And once I got over expecting five seconds flat, I really leaned into enjoying the journey of this album. Especially with the callbacks and parallels with her second album and how she really feels like she's stuck in the same cycle, and the meta callback of how she just keeps running back to this man who treats her horrible when she needs new music. OOP. Gagged me a bit. I also really liked the thematics of this album starting with her talking about her relationship being about ups and downs & slowly over the course of the album starting to realize that it's just going in circles rather than doing hills and valleys. Really cool concept to me and I thinks he executes it flawlessly over some really, really pretty songs. A few really had me in shambles and I really don't want to relate to Lizzy but I fear that I... do. EEK.

Fave Songs: Come Down Soon, Movie Star, All Falls Down, Drunk Running, Broken Glass, You Forced Me To, I Guess, Vortex

Deeper Well - Kacey Musgraves
★★☆☆☆

Okay, I do want to go on the record and say that I LOOOOVE Kacey's last two albums. The journey of getting to listen to her fall in love to switching it up and having her next one all about how her relationship fell apart was just like.. cinematic masterpiece to me. Sorry to you and your life, though, queen. Yikes. But then we travel into Deeper Well where she starts singing about the healing process after she got over her divorce which.. like, I think on paper is a fine concept but it just kind of fell flat to me. The vibe of it just kind of felt like I was following Kacey around a farmer's market trying to find some crystals to heal her broken heart. But we like, already went through her heartbreak in the last album and this was just framed in a way that didn't really grab me like her last two. There is also something kind of unsettling about the album cover to me, but I really can't put my finger on what it is.

Fave Songs: Cardinal, Too Good to be True, Sway, Jade Green, The Architect

Girl With No Face - Allie X
★★★★☆

Allie X really never misses for me, she has such an interesting ear for music and when a song of her comes on you just, like KNOW it is her. She has such a cool like.. German underground club vibe and that will always do it for me. I want to up and jumping anytime her music comes on. This album in particular felt like a mixture of an 80s workout playlist mixed with a video game soundtrack & that is a real slayer for me in terms of vibe. One of my first albums that I dived into this year and it has really stuck with me through them all which is why I know it's a slay for me, I just think there were a few songs that lagged. But I think it might be because there were some REAL bops on there and they were always going to be a little lackluster in comparison.

Fave Songs: Girl With No Face, Off With Her Tits, Galina, Hardware Software, Black Eye, & Truly Dreams

Venus - Zara Larsson
★★☆☆☆

I hate to hate on girlies for singing their hearts out on songs, but I just.. I really feel like Zara would be so much successful if she just stuck to making pop dance songs. That's what she is best at, but she tried to branch out and have her singer/songwriter moment on this album and I fear it just didn't hit.. I think there are just so many people who have better writing and a better voice than her. And I hate to compare people but when there are so many albums coming out this year, I really cannot be bothered to try and force myself to stan the mid of it all. There wasn't anything wrong with it persay, but there sure wasn't a whole lot right either! Sorry, girl! But the dance anthems were really fun and campy, I think we should focus up on those!

Fave Songs: Can't Tame Her, None of These Guys, You Love Who You Love

Fireworks & Rollerblades - Benson Boone
★★★★☆

I actually didn't know who this was before I pressed play on the album, but I decided to take a break from my #KeepMenOutOfMusic campaign to give it a chance. I really liked the album art and threw it on to see what I would enjoy and I honestly.. really enjoyed it! It was kind of giving similar vibes to The Backseat Lovers, and I think the music was really fun? It was boppy enough to keep me engaged but subtle enough to really let his voice shine which really ATE. I was shook, he has a nice higher voice with a bit of rasp behind it. Shocked me a bit, but I will take it. Kind of rock, kind of indie, a little bit of pop? I think he's going to be really niche and popular like Greta Van Fleet.

Fave Songs: Be Someone, Slow It Down, Beautiful Things, Drunk In My Mind, & There She Goes

For Your Consideration - Empress Of
★★★☆☆

I've heard a lot about Empress Of in passing and in my radios & what not, and I've always enjoyed her but never really took a deepdive. So I thought why not! Let's give her album a stream and see what it's about, and I was really impressed! I think the middle part is definitely the strongest bit of the album and really outslays the rest, much like eternal sunshine. I think her mixing modern pop with a bit of spanish influence really blended together in such a nice way. I don't know if this album made me OBSESSED with her but I think I would go see her show if she came to town. I think I might need to do a bit more digging into her to be a stan but definitely worth a stream if you want some hip shaking pop music.

Fave Songs: Lorelei, Femenine, What Type of Girl Am I?, Facil, Sucia, What's Love