ALBUM REVIEWS

DESIGNED BY KATE TRIMBLE

One Thing At A Time Morgan Wallen

M organ Wallen is back with the already successful “One Thing At A Time,” Wallen’s third studio album. The album is everything you’d expect from a pop-country record. Well, except for the fact the album is a miserable 36 tracks long, an almost two hour runtime. While not a regular country listener, I committed myself to listening to the whole album. Twenty minutes in, I was already bored and deeply regretting my decision.

Most of the songs are unremarkable, sometimes painful to sit through. Some tracks are genuinely worth a listen, but you’ll have to dig through hours of “meh” to find them. The album’s bloated tracklist makes this album feel more like an attempt at saturating the country charts than an attempt at a cohesive body of work. I don’t care how good Morgan Wallen thought the songs were, no album needs 36 tracks.

BY ETHAN DYRLI BY EMILIE RUSH

SWARM NI'JAH

"T his is not a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is intentional."

This is the message that welcomes viewers into the world of “Swarm,” a new Amazon Prime series spearheaded by Donald Glover. While it speaks to the plot of the story, it also speaks to the original music featured in the show. Repetitive, rhythmic, and raunchy; fictitious mega-star Ni’jah does a good job of channeling the hypnotic vibes of her real-world counterpart; Beyonce.

The album plays with female empowerment and confidence in a characteristically Beyonce fashion, where the answer always seems to be realizing you’re the best thing to have ever happened. In the show, the music shines, but none of the songs hit hard enough independently to make me consider adding them into my routine playlist. Watch “Swarm” for sure, and if you’re ever cleaning up a lot of blood, might I suggest turning on “Sticky”?

FANTASY M83 shows in the instrumentals and layered harmonies. There are moments in the album that are forgettable and seem repetitive, especially as the album progresses. But there are also moments in the album that will make you stop what you are doing and just listen. This album is worth the listen just for the production, but don’t expect it to have a lasting impact on your music library.

BY AJ JEROME