Opinz

Fall Out Boy – Folie à Deux

It’s almost too easy to hate a band who writes songs about the “emo scene,” but here’s the thing: if you can listen to this record and take completely at face value, you’ll find it at the very least sonically interesting (for the most part) and at best a fun collection of (mostly) well-written songs that are better than most “pop punk” music out there; Fall Out Boy are easily dumped into the Blink-182-clone trash heap but are doing more on Folie à Deux to escape it than in the past, and the result is a more enjoyable album than they’ve ever made. More »

Kanye West – 808s & Heartbreak

808s & Heartbreak is certainly indulgent and the fans and critics are going to tear Kanye West to pieces for it, but the music itself is sound: a collection of emotionally aching tunes built on top of chilly, minimalist beats and mechanical effects, a brave, interesting, and refreshingly focused departure in a music industry where ‘change’ and ‘experimentation’ are four-letter words.

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