{"id":45644,"date":"2019-06-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/stigma\/"},"modified":"2019-06-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T00:00:00","slug":"stigma","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/stigma\/","title":{"rendered":"Stigma"},"content":{"rendered":"

EMF had good intentions with this follow-up to their debut Schubert Dip<\/i>. Alas, good intentions did not translate into a very good album.<\/p>\n

There was \u201cUnbelievable,\u201d and then there was the rest of Schubert Dip<\/i>. If you invested seriously enough in this disc, you would know that not only was the rest of Schubert Dip<\/i> far superior than the aforesaid track, but it was darker and harder. Stigma<\/i> takes after this side of Schubert Dip<\/i>, and ratchets it up a few notches.<\/p>\n

If some of the hardest numbers on Schubert Dip<\/i> <\/a>\u2013 for example, \u201cChildren\u201d or \u201cLong Summer Days\u201d \u2013 could have predicted what\u2019s to be expected on Stigma<\/i>, this would have been a masterpiece! But the music just doesn\u2019t have focus. The songs are too scattered, and you are pretty much trying to catch up with the chaos throughout.<\/p>\n

Again, going back to Stigma<\/i>\u2019s predecessor, being \u201cscattered\u201d wasn\u2019t much of an issue. Take \u201cI Believe\u201d for instance, which had way too many things going on. But it was still a pretty solid and catchy number. This cut, again on the harder side of Schubert Dip<\/i>, was edgy and dancy. The same can be said about most of Stigma <\/i>too, which however isn\u2019t nearly as good in the songwriting department.<\/p>\n

Stigma<\/i> isn\u2019t a bad album, and there is no track here that\u2019s intolerable. It\u2019s just that this disc feels like a missed opportunity. If you take the album highlights \u201cGetting Through\u201d and \u201cShe Bleeds,\u201d where the band gets just about everything right, you know Stigma<\/i> had some serious potential. <\/p>\n

EMF get full marks for daring an album like Stigma<\/i>, which has zero pop music promise. Knowing quite well that Stigma <\/i>will not appeal to most people, this big \u201cmiddle finger\u201d to the world and to their cash cow \u201cUnbelievable\u201d was a ballsy move on EMF\u2019s part. So, for a record that was destined to be unloved, Stigma<\/i> is a wonderfully interesting experiment in non-conformity, and EMF deserve total respect for this. But the songs here are just not that great; and for this reason, Stigma<\/i> will be forever destined as the \u201cawkward follow-up release,\u201d a sad fate for an album that was borne out of honorable vision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":33822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10381],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-45644","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-emf","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45644"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45644"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}