After listening to Mezzanine 10 times in one day, I decided I needed another album. Naturally, I turned to Blue Lines by Massive Attack. I like the album, but I was not feeling the, "Oh yeah, this is the one," sensation. I thought about it for a minute and realized that Blue Lines is a little more R&B-ish than Mezzanine. Where I would draw a comparison between Mezzanine and late 90's Radiohead, I would feel more comfortable lumping Blue Lines in with a sort of trip hop, alt-R&B style. That got me thinking about how Frank Ocean is releasing a new album (hopefully) sometime before the end of this month. So...
channel ORANGE is kickass. May I just begin with punchline, here. I suppose this is the best thing that can really be said about it: The album is 56 minutes long (62 if you have a version with "Golden Girl," which I do not) and I swear that it is not a minute over 35. And I am not kidding even a little bit; there is no part of me that believes that this album is almost an hour long. I think to myself, "'Pyramids' is about 10 minutes long and the other 16 songs--many of which are 30 second skits--probably add up to about 25, so that puts the whole record at 35 minutes." This album feels about as long as Chutes Too Narrow by The Shins. Much like Frankie Ocean's childhood summertime romance of which he appears to be singing about, the time sure does fly.
The six obvious wonders from this album are "Thinkin Bout You,"Sweet Life," "Super Rich Kids," "Pyramids," "Lost," and "Bad Religion," but channel ORANGE is so perfectly constructed that even the skits are not just time-consumers. As you could probably tell from my last paragraph, I think the budget on time is exceptionally, almost impossibly, economical. This album, in all it's smooth, neo-soulish glamour, is surely one of my favourite R&B records of modern times.
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