Album of the Week: Imperfect Cadence

I think three album reviews is a reasonable goal for the summer, don't you? In the email, I released the full list of albums that we'll be covering this summer. I'm hoping to reach out to all PoYB contributors during that time and nailing down which three you'll be covering. That way, you'll know well in advance, and can start listening to those albums now (just in case your life is busy and you need to consciously make time for blogging). Don't worry, I'll be reaching out to you directly, you don't have to read this introductory paragraph in order to get annoyed by me!

Record Club:

archives | supplemental

spotify playlist | youtube playlist

choose | writing

WEEK 327 — May 4-10, 2025

Imperfect Cadence

by ONR. and the Listening Planet

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

~~~~~~~~~~

PICKED BY RACHEL C.

RACHEL'S COMMENTS: "I think it will be a fun spring one with its nature focus."

~~~~~~~~~~

ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: No RYM or Wikipedia page for this album, so I'm going out on a limb and saying that it's a mix of alternative pop and field recordings, but don't hold me to that. Bandcamp (not the most consistent when it comes to genre tags) has indie pop and nature sounds on there as well.

RELEASED: December 6, 2024

LENGTH: 28:38

TRACKLIST:

1. You & I
2. Brace
3. Small Mercies
4. Breathe
5. Run Aground
6. The Lows
7. Than Water
8. I Will Wait

LYRICS: I couldn't find any, but I'm assuming that ONR. sings at least a little bit on here

~~~~~~~~~~

ARTIST DETAILS

PRONOUNS: he/him/his for both artists

ABOUT ONR.: Robert David Shields was born in Renfrewshire, Scotland (unknown year), and has remained in Scotland throughout his life. There was a year as a teenager, though, when he set up shop in LA and recorded music for his own record label, occasionally as a band known as Finding Albert. In 2016, he started to record as ONR., which is pronounced like "honor," and always uses a period after the R. He was signed to Capitol Records, and then Warner Brothers. He has a working relationship and a friendship with Nile Rodgers. Shields is an environmentalist and conservationist, which led him to collaborate with world-renowned nature sound recordist Martyn Stewart.

ABOUT THE LISTENING PLANET: Martyn Stewart us a world-renowned nature sound recordist. Not too many specific details about his birth and early life. We can assume he was born in the U.K. in the 1960s. His website indicates that he's been recording nature since age eleven, when he went out behind the house with his brother's band's microphone to record a blackbird. He's visited over 55 countries, recorded 97,000 sounds (including over 3500 species of birds), and his collection runs to over 30,000 hours. The Listening Planet is a non-profit through which he does his work "saving the planet." He is not a musician, but has recently collaborated with musicians, leading him to work with ONR.

DISCOGRAPHY: As far as I can tell, this is the first studio album for ONR., though he has an EP and a bunch of singles to his name. It might be the first for the Listening Planet too. The website has a bunch of other albums, but all of them besides this one has "Coming Soon" written under them.

~~~~~~~~~~

ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: NPR interview with Stewart in 2024

WATCHING SOME SHIT: The Listening Planet's featured bird sounds

RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: When was the last time we had two different artists collaborate on an RC album? I'm not talking about two musicians who make up one entity, like a duo. I'm talking about two distinct artists who got together and said "we're going to make an album together" and then billed the album as from two different artists. I think Maps counts, because billy woods and Kenny Segal are different artists, even though that's more of a rapper/producer relationship than an equal-footing temporary duo. Before that, you gotta go all the way back to Week 139, with A Beginner's Mind, a team-up with Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine. And before that, we had The Order of Nature by Jim James and Teddy Abrams, CORRESPONDENCE by Jens Lekman and Annika Norlin, and Years to Burn by Iron & Wine and Calexico.

As far as fields recordings are concerned, there have been a few, though never a full album of field recordings (not that this album is a full album of field recordings, I'm just saying). Off the top of my head, Empath had some, and Waak Waak Djungi I think, and maybe technically some with In Love with a Ghost? Actually, that Empath album probably has the most similarities title-wise, not only including the word "listening," but also including a planet (earth). ONR.'s name, meanwhile, is suspiciously close to O.A.R.'s.

MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: None. I've never even heard of either of these artists before Rachel brought 'em to the table. To be clear, this is a very good thing.

~~~~~~~~~~

OTHER ALBUMS TO CHECK OUT

LAST WEEK'S ALBUM: When the Night by St. Lucia, and make sure to check out the reviews if you wanna see what we thought of it!

RC@5: We're relistening to the Record Club album we featured exactly five years ago this week. The RC album for this week in 2020 was The Main Thing by Real Estate.

RC f/u: We're attempting to catch up on all the new albums from our esteemed Record Club alumni. Mini-reviews coming next Saturday, this week for COWBOY CARTER by Beyoncé and Light Verse by Iron & Wine.

SHADOW RECORD CLUB: Each week, I'm exploring a genre of last week's album by listening to one of that genre's top-rated albums. Last week's When the Night was a big music album. We're listening this week to Ljubav by Ekatarina Velika.

NEXT WEEK'S RC ALBUM: In case you need some extra time with an album to write a review for it, you can get a head start on If You Asked for a Picture by Blondshell!

~~~~~~~~~~

Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!