@jackstrawful

8 months ago

This is by far my favorite Disclosure album since the debut, with a solid 5 different contenders for my favorite Disclosure song since Latch - the first two, the last two and A Little Bit - I like them all so much that I still can't decide, even after a dozen complete listens. Yet, the fine folks over at AOTY have somehow decided that only four songs even crack a score of 70, without a single 80? AOTY was kinder to the debut than RYM, with an equivalent score of 4.00 to RYM's 3.39, yet it's been reversed since then, with the RYM scores gradually going up with each post-debut release, while AOTY has been dropping, leaving Alchemy with a paltry 62. Of course, the professionals can be even worse in some ways. Not necessarily with the scores - the average pro score has been slightly higher than the user score for every album since the debut - but there's the pathetically damning fact that with Disclosure no longer on a major label, most pros are completely ignoring them, with a measly 5 US reviews compared to 2 to 3 dozen on the previous albums. This was also the biggest miss by Fantano in quite a while. A 5/10 with the headline Consistently Meh? Did he even listen to Looking For Love, Simply Won't Do, A Little Bit or Talk on the Phone? These songs have me groovin harder than anything all year. And how can production as impactful as Disclosure's ever be meh? More like Consistently Lush. Music critics will never make sense to me, whether they be professionals or the enthusiasts at AOTY or RYM. You'd think that those people, with their supposedly more sophisticated tastes, would be more prone to appreciate the laidback simplicity and artistry on display here, forgoing the big name features or reliance on samples, instead just making the music they feel, for the sheer love of their craft. Turns out those so-called taste-makers are just as basic as your typical Top-40 listener, seeming to demand the flash and sizzle of celebrity star power to get them interested.

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