The Streets
Computers and Blues (Deluxe Version)
Album · Pop · 2011
Mike Skinner’s decade-long recording career as The Streets—always envisioned, by him, as a boxset-like, finite body of work—comes to something like a close with this experimental, valedictory fifth album. But Computers and Blues doesn’t merely offer a victory lap revival of the geezer rap confessionals that Skinner made his name with. Or even, for that matter, the wholesale lump-in-throat emotion you might expect from a farewell (the glitchy, fatherhood-themed “Blip On a Screen” notwithstanding). Instead, what Skinner crafts is an unpredictable, living synthesis of all his previous styles; 14 maximalist tracks that barrel thrillingly from the aggro glam rock of “Going Through Hell” to the wistful, tower block romance of “Roof of Your Car”.
Computers and Blues (Deluxe Version)
The Streets
Mike Skinner’s decade-long recording career as The Streets—always envisioned, by him, as a boxset-like, finite body of work—comes to something like a close with this experimental, valedictory fifth album. But Computers and Blues doesn’t merely offer a victory lap revival of the geezer rap confessionals that Skinner made his name with. Or even, for that matter, the wholesale lump-in-throat emotion you might expect from a farewell (the glitchy, fatherhood-themed “Blip On a Screen” notwithstanding). Instead, what Skinner crafts is an unpredictable, living synthesis of all his previous styles; 14 maximalist tracks that barrel thrillingly from the aggro glam rock of “Going Through Hell” to the wistful, tower block romance of “Roof of Your Car”.
