Top 25 Albums of 2018 #23
Let's Eat Grandma - I'm All Ears
Release Date: June 29th, 2018
Genre: Art Pop
For fans of: Bjork, Tegan & Sara, Posting memes on Tumblr
Growing up in the age of the internet must seem like such a wild, alien thing to our parents. Either that or, probably more likely, they’re so far removed from what we’re doing and the interactions we’re having on these platforms that they think our experience isn’t as vastly dissimilar from theirs as it is. Social media in 2018 is such a smart, captivating, hilarious and heartbreaking ****show, with so many piles of nuances, inside jokes, and unwritten rules that it practically has its own language, and it most certainly has its own culture. Only someone very in-tune with all this could make an album like I’m All Ears, so it came as no surprise to me to find out the two women behind the record are only 19 years old. By honing in on and writing about what they know best, the two musicians who go by the, notably and perhaps intentionally lame, moniker Let’s Eat Grandma, expertly crafted the glitchy and feminine soundtrack to me scrolling through my Instagram feed, liking heavily-filtered pictures of celebrities and strangers “living their best life” and sending my friends memes saying “lol its so me” whether it really is or not. And yet throughout the album, we remain self-aware of the sinister and fake nature of our tech-filled reality.
After an ominous string heavy intro, that honestly gives me more Godspeed You! Black Emperor vibes than synthpop ones, I’m All Ears opens up with the lead single ‘Hot Pink’, an anthem disparaging those who look down or think less of anyone, male, female, nb etc just because they tend to conform to “girly” stereotypes. It begins subdued, but once the chorus hits, the listener is quickly reminded that this is one of the SOPHIE produced tracks, when her signature metallic clang bursts through. Now I’ll admit, I was not a fan of her record this year at all; I found it grating and noisy, but man do those booming, tinny sounds play off LEG’s soft but bitter vocals so well here. On the following track, ‘It’s Not Just Me’, also produced by SOPHIE, we get the first of many perfectly flowing mood switches on the record, as the harshness is traded in for lighter, spacier synths emitting euphoric dance-pop as the ladies trade verses on the feelings of positivity and timelessness that a healthy relationship provides. This romance, like all others, isn’t without its imperfections though. The last line before the first chorus: “I guess I’ll see you when the screen is vibrating” provides a hauntingly familiar feeling of millennial goodbye. On ‘Falling Into Me’ LEG turns back the clock on that relationship closer to its starting point, summing it up beautifully and succinctly in three words repeated throughout over a wall of synths and saxophone: “You / Me / This”.
Though I’m All Ears transitions very well from song to song and mood to mood, there are clearly three distinct sections, the second of which, unfortunately is mostly filler. The bloated, bluesy ballad ‘Snakes & Ladders’ has been done so much better so many times over by other artists, and the two interludes, which are essentially just a couple iPhone ringtones and a sample of a cat snoring, while very fitting for the overall theme, are clear skipping points on repeated listens.
We come back down to Earth on ‘Cool & Collected’, which is simply about being in awe and perhaps even jealous of how put-together and stable the people around you seem, and plays on that more general feeling of just wanting to fit in and be cool. These sentiments echo so deep within me that I wish so badly that this song was better. Containing more traditional backing music, beginning with mostly just guitar and piano, it suffers from being overlong and drags to the point where I’m not sure if its worth it or not to sit through until the admittedly pretty awesome last couple minutes where drums are added to the instrumental and it all comes together very satisfyingly. They strip it down even further to just piano on the penultimate track, ‘Ava’, a melancholy piece about growing pains, which tugs at your heartstrings, but by this point you know when LEG are at their best, and this isn’t it. They refuse to leave you wanting though, as the closer ‘Donnie Darko’ begins with more muted piano, but this time its clearly building towards something. A microcosm of the whole record, LEG runs the gamut of everything they’ve done to this point over an 11-minute epic. This is the kind of song where you start nodding your head along with the beat, and as it swells and progresses, you find yourself tapping your foot as well, then your whole body is into it and before you know it you’re shaking your ass on the dancefloor of the club that is your living room. It’s catharsis. The listener has gone through the highs and lows of navigating the transition to adulthood and found out that its all random and inevitable, so **** it. We’re all awkward, we all make mistakes, and we’ve all said dumb things we wish we could take back, but we can’t. At the end of the day, we’re all growing and changing together, and for better or for worse, thanks to always being connected through social media and a tiny computer in our pocket, our experiences are more visible than they ever have been. Accomplishment, embarrassment, or other, everyone in your network is going to know about it sooner or later, and there’s a weird beauty in accepting that.
When LEG are on, they’re so on it gives me chills, and if by cutting out the material I don’t love, they lose what makes them so charming, then I hope they don’t change one bit. However, I know the duo has the ability to make a record I would love from front to back, and I’m so excited to see what is to come from them. I struggled for a long time with where to place I’m All Ears on my list, and may come to regret putting some others ahead of it, but while containing some of my favorite musical moments of the whole year, looking forward there are many other albums I enjoyed more as a whole.
Overall Score: 7.6/10
Highlights: It's Not Just Me, Donnie Darko