Ben's SARS - Julien Baker

The following is based on a true story: you can read this review in less time than it takes to eat a donut, unless you are some kind of jaw-unhinging speed-eating champ, in which case please stay away from my donuts.

Julien Baker - Sprained Ankle

This album is not commute material. Mainly because the single best adjective for it would be intimate. It would be best live in a small, dimly lit bar where people are young and so excited about the power of music they sit quietly on the floor during the performance. Listening to it on a crowded subway (which precludes actually hearing most of it) kind of defeats the purpose, and this may have unnecessarily soured me on what is most likely a pretty decent album. I dunno. Please listen to it yourself and tell me what I missed!

All I know is that in the subway, what stands out most about this is the guitar playing, which has the same kind of studied, stilted deliberateness as child-actor enunciation. And the singing sounds kind of overly distraught. But then again, I can't really tell without turning the volume up to hearing-loss levels and this is also me pretty much most of the time anyway:

TL;DR I did not have the patience necessary to enjoy this on my ride to work. Maybe you will, though?