vagabonds

6y

friendship is so crazy wtffffff

FREE

6y

@Mitchell up and up

BRAVE

6y

Fresh Thoughts
Acting Normal serves as a strong opener, giving us some of the twee yet fresh Summer pop-rock we’ve come to love after the trio’s previous project Surf. This continues with next few tracks, to the point where, despite sounding as delightful as ever, made me a little worried about it would get formulaic if it continued. But then something happened...

Friendship comes on, and the album takes a complete turn. It’s the most ambitious track thus far: the intro of different voices giving friendly dedications, the production that made me go back to Daft Punk’s Discovery, the pitched up Auto-Tune vocals in the super infectious hook, and of course the groovy beat switch. This is when the album truly picks up for me.

The single *Britney B***** continues the “leveling up” of the album from the previous track with plenty of energy , memorability and charisma. Placing the standout single right after the album hits a new high had to have been a cunning decision - one that was definitely worth it

Beatrix Kiddo holy s***. I felt like I was in a sequel to Scott Pilgrim vs the World, it’s grungey while having that signature laid back BSK vibe, and sort of a pleasant twist in the album. It will be one of the songs that stick with listeners.

Verdict
If you fell in love with BLACKSTARKIDS after Surf you’ll wanna go to Kay and blow all your fraudulent EDD benefits on a ring to propose to them after Whatever, Man. A cinematic, high energy, fun project filled to the brim with passion and a strong vision that stays consistent while showing the band’s versatility.

There’s so much sincerity and candor about youth throughout the project that even if you don’t like the way the album sounds, you can’t deny that it captures your ears - and I can’t wait for more of that sincerity from BLACKSTARKIDS in the future.

hey man relax

6y

congrats!! so dope seeing the progression over the past few years

Rainbow Road

6y

friendship might be a sonic masterpiece sheesh

getting lightning fire magic prayer vibes from it

Childhood

6y

Release on Thursday?

mr get dough

6y

Thank you sooo much and ur avy is funny af bro 😭

mr get dough

6y

My fav song i lowkey was convinced people werent gonna fw it too tough

vagabonds

6y

bro you floated on that mf

deadass my fav song on here such a vibe

G Roy

6y

sent this to Mitch through IG but felt it was valuable enough to post here so,,,, lol here are my messy thoughts

(just to clarify, I can not confirm or deny if every thing or idea i compare or allude to here was what was actually going through everyone’s minds when making the album but just what i perceived, you may confirm or deny anything as you see fit.)

Wow. Feel like a mess so apologies if this comes out jobbled but just wanted to give this as a raw reaction.

From the get go with Acting Normal, and a tone that is consistent throughout all the 10 tracks, it feels like this record is quite pivotal, not only in bsk’s whole career which I’ve had the pleasure to watch grow and extend since pretty much the inception, but also for the current music landscape overall. Throughout the 10 tracks “Whatever, Man” explores multiple ideas both in social scape and pop cultural scape I’ve found intriguing and exciting but have rarely seen any artists truly vocalize and act on. Just looking at the landscape of music this year I’ve found it dry and overall, to put it bluntly, cheapened and frankly ugly in it’s depictions of life and pop culture around it. Not to name any names so I don’t step on any toes, “Whatever, Man” seems to actively go against the postmodern grain of ironic detachment and empty tunes to accelerate into something fresh, and dare I say, metamodernist in how it balances earnest inspiration from the past with pushing into a wholly new soundscape entierally. Every Other artist I’ve seen this year interact with Y2k type aesthetics and props or anything currently “vintage” (have it be you 90s or Y2k) come off as bad faith to me and derivative yet never really truly wanting to engage with the ideas presented across the sounds, just use them as props. What makes me find “Whatever, Man” so fascinating is how eagerly it works within its own set rules of pastiches of radio (the radio interludes particularly reminded me of Ayesha Erotica’s “Loose Teens” set up, even Gabe’s flow sometimes reminded me of ayesha), vlogging and pop cultural items and figures (as shown through titles like “Britney, B****”, “Frankie Muniz” & “Dead Kennedys”) but then accumulates them into a push forward, into what should come next and what sounds fresh to a new gen. That’s why I view this album as pivotal in a general sense to the current soundscape of 2020, it feels like every idea brought up here, even in a time of such strife, never becomes nihilistic in it’s worldview and instead, curiously humanist. But also, even besides all that, take away any context or pretense to when this album is coming into the world. From just a point of BSK as a whole this feels major.

“Whatever, Man” feels like BSK fully realized and ready to go into true full-on success (all the way to the mainstream baby). And it’s not a diss on the past 2 great records but this one feels like the time when stars fully align and a sound is fully established, and here it feels like one unheard, a path untraveled, a sight unseen. Every influence that goes into the blender of BSK (alternative, pop, rap, anything) that could’ve come off as clunky in past releases are now fully blended into a futuristic but cloudy familiar territory. Everybody vocally, lyrically and productionlly (ok, making up words now) have fully come into their own and ready to forge a new path. Maybe the most crucial record on the whole album, to me at least, comes in the form of “Friendship”, exactly halfway through the record and a beat change to solidify that were we are going into is the future of BSK, a trope that may seem tired but is rejuvenated within the context of the whole album and group as a whole. I didn’t want to go track by track here cause it seems kinda monotonous but through the first half of the album we find some of BSK’s most airy and breezy compositions keeping up the motif of youthful longing and dreaming but still a tint of polish you couldn’t find on past releases, but then with the switch to “Friendship” it feels like we get a metaphorical wake up call in the form of audio snippets from both labelmate Beabadoobee & label owner (is he the label owner? I don’t actually know but we’ll go along with it for the sake of this) Matty Healy to fully symbolize the shift in where the group was before and after, and with the beat switch comes, to me at least, what feels like a direct pastiche to “Analog” by Tyler, The Creator which comes to me to symbolize and paid homage to where BSK and specifically Ty started off as an artist (on odd future talk) and where they are going: ahead of that with it still in the pocket.

In general it feels like record slowly shifts along with this with the followup track “Britney, B****” keeping up the same mood but slowly shifting into more reflective territory with “Camp Whatever” and “Tangerine Love” which sees maybe BSK’s most moody work with Deiondre sounding vaguely like “To Record Only Water for Ten Days” era John Frusciante but then ultimately leaving off with “Let’s Play God”, the title track to the trilogy this album belongs to and closes out, symbolizing a shift in not only BSK’s current status but sounds that can only feel like it could get better from here. Like I said at the start: Pivotal. To not only where BSK is going but to where music as a culture could be going.

tupacarti

6y

cigarettes and tangerine love r my favorites

goretex

6y

THIS SO BEAUTIFUL MAN

mr get dough

6y

Yo dude this write up was f***ing awesome

I love u, i think ur one of the most awesome people ever and u have a great future if u believe in yourself

Also Matty owns some of dirty bit but the owner is a guy name Jamie, he a goat