My Cultural Lowlights: WEYES BLOOD

These days, it almost seems arbitrary, the way people choose a new record to gush over. They call it the best album of the month, year, decade, ever. They tweet about it a lot more than they actually listen to it. They lionise it beyond all reason. So that when the time comes and you actually give it a good listen, you roll your eyes to Heaven and you say 'well, all right...'.

Happens to be Weyes Blood this time. And when I say 'happens', I do not mean 'bad'. Far from it. Titanic Rising is a lovely record, dreamy, nostalgic and self-consciously gorgeous. Take "Everyday", for instance. The song, possibly the biggest highlight on the album, is an ideal throwback to the hippy era of loose jeans, daisy chains and the smell of patchouli. Is it bad? Not with a sweeping chorus melody like that. But equally, it is so inescapably unexceptional that you almost have to wonder why the goddamn acclaim. Or take "Movies", a song praised to an almost hilarious extent. So meticulously pretty you cannot breathe. But then neither can the song. 

Part of me is almost ready to believe that this is all calculated - and the universal elation was the effect of some deliberately constructed equation. A conspiracy. Some clever ploy. Or maybe this is just the way some people are struggling with boredom - by choosing some random record and going nuts over it. Because while Titanic Rising does have its appeal, God knows parts of it are just plain dull. And I know that 'dull' is hardly an esoteric word, not the sort people use when describing this album, but occasionally it's very pleasing to say something straightforward in the world ruled by waves, tides and a four-letter word that rhymes with 'shepherd's pipe'.