When I recorded this week’s episode of Celebration Rock on Friday, it was only 12 hours or so after one of the year’s most anticipated albums, Kanye West’s Ye, dropped. So it was only natural that I talked about the record with this week’s guest, Pitchfork Senior Editor Jeremy Larson, offering my most piping hot takes after a handful of listens. We also talked about Kanye’s overall legacy this decade, and debated the merits of The Life Of Pablo, a record that I believe signaled the beginning of his current “meh” period.
Jeremy and I also talked about another album that dropped on Friday, Father John Misty’s God’s Favorite Customer. In my RX review that ran last week, I wrote the following:
Lest this sound like an insufferable pity party, God’s Favorite Customer also manages to address many of the complaints that detractors had about Pure Comedy. At 39 minutes, it’s half as long as its predecessor, and it’s not nearly as lush or opulent. The overused epithet “pretentious” can’t be credibly applied to God’s Favorite Customer. Tillman is more or less back to writing punchy, tuneful pop songs that get philosophical about the nature of love, only now he sounds older and more exhausted with himself. Working again with producer Jonathan Wilson, as well as Jonathan Rado of Foxygen, Tillman has wandered into the bruised-and-battered wing of ’70s singer-songwriter pop, the terrain where Harvest recedes into Tonight’s The Night.
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Jeremy and I also talked about Parquet Courts, who released the solid Wide Awake! in May, and whether they should be considered one of the decade’s best indie bands.
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