What's fair? What's a fair assessment? There was a lot of morning-commute listening this week, which maybe isn't the right place / right time. On one hand, the combination of Blondshell's timbre and the rhythmic guitar backbone of most of these songs works. Songs range across topics from dealing with one's not awful, but pretty awkward relationships, around mild self-loathing, around murky ennui, and around dealing with all of the above. These are highly relatable topics and also work. But taken as a whole album, it has highs and lows, and isn't gripping all the way through.
I wonder what Blond's older, "poppier" songs are like, because the elements are clearly baked into some of the tracks like the chorus of "What's Fair." Some lyrics are clever in a funny way, like "I've been running this ship like the navy / but it's more like a Wendy's," even if Long John Silvers is the obvious fast food aquatic analogue. There's a lot of little allusions and references here, starting right with the album title I guess. "23's..." made me think of that one blink-182 song, which I am probably only remembering because of this very blog, which surely couldn't have been the artist's intention. Anyway, keep rocking Blondshell, there's enough raw material here to keep more and interesting work going. I certainly had a few of these earworms stuck in my head over the last couple days.
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