Pretend - Tapestry'd Life
Exo has great taste. I've seen him rep tons of great albums here over the years and there are a lot of times where our tastes align.
This is not one of those times.
Clocking in at perhaps the most preposterously unwarranted 77 minutes in the history of music, I found this album to be an absolute slog to get through. To be blunt and direct, I genuinely hate this album.
In terms of positives, I can definitely say that there are some talented musicians at work here. I appreciate the drumming on here at a lot of points and the guitarists clearly know their way around the instrument. Too bad the majority of the time they're simply playing the same few repetitive arpeggios over and over through the entire length of these ridiculously bloated 10 minute songs. "Math rock" isn't really a genre I would say I've dabbled in much but I've definitely enjoyed some work by artists like Slint and Battles in the past, and there's a certain ability that those bands have to morph this style into more engaging song structures that I find Pretend to be completely missing the mark on. This really just sounds like nearly 80 minutes of dudes ****ing around, and the degree to which that devolves into pretentiousness for me is truly grating. One of the top reviews of the album on Bandcamp compliments the band by saying they "never take too long to get to the point," and I just don't understand how we could be listening to the same album. The songs never get to any point at all for me, there is no payoff, it's all the same all the time and what's there is only inherently enjoyable for a couple minutes tops, let alone almost 80.
There are some sparse vocals throughout that add absolutely nothing, they just kinda float around and it feels like the singer only hits one singular airy falsetto note throughout the entire album. Despite all of these negatives I can actually envision a context where I could enjoy this music, and that's if I were watching it live. I think witnessing the guitar playing and drumming in person would give me some further appreciation for the technicality of what's on display, but for home listening I consider this to be a dreadfully boring album.
Sorry, Exo. I hope this isn't too disappointing of a review to hear. I still respect your music taste as a whole and look forward to your posts any time you talk about an album you like. For me though this album gets a
3/10.