Purple Naked Ladies

the take

The wave of nostalgia hit me almost instantly when "Violet Nude Women" began playing. "Purple Naked Ladies" was a literal soundtrack to my life in 2014 up until about early 2015. But looking back, this album is really a more jazzy version of a Jet Age of Tomorrow album. The Internet only consisted of Syd and Matt Martians around this time, so this album doesn't have that sound the band has today because there literally wasn't a band backing them up. (As in, Steve Lacy didn't come into the picture yet.) This is really more of an electronic album that's kind of in the same realm as N.E.R.D's electronic version of "In Search Of...". And yet, there is still a great deal of good material on here that I consider some of the group's best. "Fastlane" is one of those ones for me, as Syd's performance on the track was beautiful, even with the somewhat simplistic songwriting. Speaking of songwriting, that's what kind of drags the album down a tad bit for me, as well as the production that ends up being a bit TOO experimental at times. In the cases of "Ode to a Dream", "They Say / Shangrila", and "Visions", the experimentation works as intended. And on those tracks that doesn't, such as "Lincoln", it still sounds good in the grand scheme of things but kind of belongs better as background music. "Purple Naked Ladies" is really a mellow R&B take of the shock value of Odd Future's other albums, and at times is undecided at which route it wants to go. It's weird, but it works for me.