Giant Palm, Naima Bock (6/10)

Naima Bock of Goat Girl just released this album as a solo project, although the album is in collaboration with arranger Joel Burton. I really like Goat Girl, so I was pretty excited to hear that Bock was doing a solo thing. If you don't know Goat Girl, they are a pretty bizarre indie rock band that has released a few albums but notably "On All Fours" last year which was one of my favorite albums of 2021. While Bock departs from the band, she maintains that strangeness in this album -- which is much slower and more instrument-based/experimental than Goat Girl. In fact, I have a hard time even giving this album a genre. It lies somewhere between the stupid category of "world music," with Bock citing the influence of Brazilian music (she is Brazilian and Greek) and maybe instrumental or experimental and maybe indie singer songwriter and even bordering on jazz at some points. The album includes seemingly endless instruments with notable presence of keys, flute, sax, and other woodwinds, violin, a larger chorus, whistling, and percussive instruments outside of a typical drum (shakers, etc.). It's no question to me that this is good and really interesting music... Pitchfork says there are over 30 instrumentalists on the album which I believe... and I'd highly recommend anyone to listen to it. That said, I just didn't really fuck with it on a taste level -- very few of the songs I put on any of my playlists although I did find the whole-album-listen to be relatively pleasant and impressive. I debated the score for a while given this fact but ended up on the lower side more in terms of my own taste. Favorite tracks: Giant Palm, Dim Dum