Emotional Whirlwinds Tying an Album Together: Totally Crushed Out

THAT DOG: TOTALLY CRUSHED OUT

SCORE: 88/100 - 8.8

Listened along with my sweet girlfriend, Valerie! It's been so long since we've done an album together, and this one was my pick! I found this album while looking through the Post-Grunge genre section, as I thought it would be nice to find something that complimented my other reviews from today. 

'Totally Crushed Out!' is a stunning concept album that is all parts cute and yearning. It loosely ties together a story with each song title, and it packs together clever aesthetic choices to make for an album that is instantly captivating just from its exterior alone. It manages to make a concept out of human emotion; an entire album conceptualized about love, infatuation, and crushes. It's a female-fronted album with an unexpectedly infectious and fuzzy sound - and the distortion of this album is one of the things that makes it stand out so much.

The album is formatted like a book in its physical releases, making it feel like a true teenage love story with everything packed together and placed in a sequence that shows true creativity and thoughtfulness to an incredibly high degree. The mixing of this album is striking - and although the vocals do overbear the instrumentals/feel like they're from an audio channel that doesn't quite settle in, this album is still highly worthwhile and gorgeous in concept alone. 

It's twee while mixing grunge, noisy power pop, and rock into one unique package, and this album sums up teenage longing, yearning, and spiraling emotions all at once within 'Ms. Wrong' alone. It's an album that has introspective moments while being tongue-in-cheek and highly self-aware, and the result is something that sticks with carefree melodies on songs like 'Silently' and thrashing female rock on others. There is a great mix of emotions and techniques here which makes it feel like a whirlwind of love and distaste - and it makes it so that there's something for every side of the process we know as love; especially how confusing and downright frustrating it can be. But it's always worth it, isn't it? It truly is a beautiful thing. 

Waronker's vocal performances mix monotone with lush layering, providing a core to the album that either hits or misses - with a lot of the songs being hits. This album spawned one of their biggest hits with 'He's Kissing Christian' - and it shows that this album truly does paint every single aspect of teenage relationships and longing. It's a perfect picture of crushing on someone; and it truly does remind me of all of the confusion I found myself in while slowly falling for my girlfriend day by day. 

It's a warm and plush album in its compositions while still being harsh and noisy, and it blends teenage femininity with something much more emotionally grating - all of the hurt, confusion, and the whirlwind that comes with the experiences brought together into an album that feels like a series of diary entries that come together into one album of bittersweetness, fleeting moments, and drastic shifts in tone - with tracks 4 and 5 being complete shifts in tone, from angry to sad in an instant right before changing back to angry all over again. It perfectly captures how it feels to be human and just how fast things can change; and it manages to string together a concept without it being too overbearingly noticeable at first glances. 

'Totally Crushed Out!' is repetitive with all of the structural elements to keep it together into something structurally sound and highly enjoyable; and the entire album perfectly encapsulates all of the deep, spiraling, and confusing feelings that falling for and finding someone can do to a person. It's a gorgeous teen-movie esque tale, and the sound of the album feels ahead of it's time in the way it sounds straight out of a 2000's teen rom-com.