Back To The Egg [Columbia, 1979]
Whew. Sixteen titles on an untimed LP that must run forty minutes if not fifty--or seventy-five. When he's on, Paulie's abundant tunefulness passes for generosity. Here he's just hoping something will stick. C

Is he right?
>Surrender [Capitol, 2022]
>It so happens that in early 2016 I briefly tutored unmistakably bright-and-a-half NYU senior Rogers, whose plan to write an Alanis Morissette 33 1/3 was shelved when Pharrell Williams, then artist in residence at NYU's Clive Davis Institute, heard something in "Alaska" that made her the biggest star the Institute has ever turned out. But it wasn't until early 2019 that Capitol dropped her Heard It in a Past Life album, which I'm not the only one to find overcooked the way multiproduced major-label debuts can be. So I was chuffed to learn that instead of rushing to follow it up Rogers took time off to earn a master's at Harvard Divinity School as she pretty much less simultaneously came up with this cleaner and more focused long-player. Sonically, although with input from Harry Styles producer Kid Harpoon I bet, the music here bears the mark of a singer-songwriter who also leads her own band. Not that it's anything like spare. But despite its orchestral dimensions it projects plenty of detail--strident, yet so intricate that its intensity has a well-wrought delicacy to it. Although the themes are more emotional than erotic, there's plenty of eroticism in there--some spirituality with an appetite for permanence too. At 28, Rogers is no longer any kind of post-teen. You can tell. A-

It's 43 minutes lol.

>>127179925
This right here is proof that Bob's brain has turned to applesauce. Shame innit.

>>127180051
he doesn't really like writing pans of albums anymore he said as he's gotten older he doesn't feel he has the authority to do that anymore

>>127180085
That's fair, and unlike many others on here I am not a Xgau hater, but if he wishes to be selective in an era of slop then highlighting M*ggie R*gers--the middest of the mid, the czarina of yuppie music--is such a major boner that I'm seriously questioning his critical faculties (or what remains of them, anyway).

>>127180085
He said as far back as the 80s that he didn't really like writing about shitty albums and would rather write about stuff he enjoys.

>six posts
>no actual discussion of the OP album in here

>>127180404
Where did you think you were?

for me its old siam, sir

>>127180310
Not as bad as scaruffi giving good grades to trannies that shill their shit music on rym

>>127180310
>M*ggie R*gers
Seethe

>>127184868
Yeah that's braindead tier but at least there's a lingering countercultural impulse there, however silly the picks might be. The Dean is praising a Natasha Bedingfield reboot who is so shit at her alleged vocation that she can't even score proper hits.