I will preface this by saying that I like Penny Parker’s online work; Real-Time Fandub has made me laugh several times, and I followed one of the podcasts she was in, Spagoots Realms, before it was cancelled.
Two years ago, I bought Go! Child’s first album, The Masquerade. Although not all of the tracks were the best (Gravitated in particular, though that gets the excuse of being the first song they wrote), I still think that album was fine enough. Not exactly good, but not exactly bad, either.
Coffee and Ramen is what happens when you take The Masquerade, add a dash of bad writing, and a tablespoon of autotuned vocals. Although the instrumentals are admittedly pretty good, the vocals are just…kinda bad, with autotune somehow making it worse; if you listen closely in the track Umami, you can hear autotune doing fine work after one of the choruses, as well in Atlanta.
The track Deadlock, released in 2017, might be one of the album’s better tracks; using something that imitates a flip-phone entering a password as the song’s main melody, as well as somewhat okay lyrics about writer’s block. On the opposite hand, the track Monster Town is quite bad; godawful lyrics using Frankenstein, zombies, and vampires as what appear to be metaphors for something that I’m not aware of as well as bad singing make this probably the weakest song on the album. I don’t know how to write lyrics, though, so I probably shouldn’t be the one complaining.
Edit 2: Oh yeah, the mixing is kinda bad too.
TL;DR: Coffee and Ramen was overcooked a few minutes too long. 2/10.
this review sucked