''Put the Shine On'' is the seventh

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...

by American musical group CocoRosie, released by

Marathon Artists Marathon Artists is a London-based independent record label founded by Paul-René Albertini, Philippe Ascoli and Jimmy Mikaoui in 2012. The label also runs its own publishing and management divisions. Artists on the label include Courtney Barn ...

on March 13, 2020.

Recording

''Put the Shine On'' was recorded primarily in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. Early performances were tested at their brother Nathan's ranch on the Big Island of

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

, where the sisters spend much of their time writing. The songs "Aloha Friday" and "Lamb and the Wolf" were both inspired by watching lambs on the ranch, including an episode where their brother had to kill an injured lamb. The album's sound has notable

hip hop Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hip- ...

influence, as the Casady sisters had worked with rapper

Chance the Rapper Chancelor Johnathan Bennett (born April 16, 1993), known professionally as Chance the Rapper, is an American rapper. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, he released his debut mixtape '' 10 Day'' (2012) during one of his high school suspension ...

on his album '' The Big Day'' prior. The sisters worked on the album between visits to their mother, Christina Chalmers, who died eleven days after providing backing vocals for the track “Ruby Red".

Critical reception

''Put the Shine On'' received mixed reviews. Sasha Geffen of ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork or hay fork is an agricultural tool used to pitch loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. It has a long handle and usually two to five thin tines designed to efficiently move such materials. The term is also applie ...

'' gave the album a rating of 5.1 out of 10, describing it as an "incoherent melange" and "a return to their

maximalist In the arts, maximalism is an aesthetic characterized by excess and abundance, serving as a reaction against minimalism. The philosophy can be summarized as "more is more", contrasting with the minimalist principle of "less is more". Literatur ...

tendencies, piling on drum machines,

chintz Chintz () is a woodblock printed, painted, stained or glazed calico textile that originated in Golconda (present day Hyderabad, India) in the 16th century. The cloth is printed with designs featuring flowers and other patterns in different colo ...

synthesizer A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

s, over-the-top raps, and

nu-metal Nu metal (sometimes stylized as nü-metal, with a metal umlaut) is a subgenre of that combines elements of heavy metal music with elements of other music genres such as hip hop, funk, industrial, and grunge. Nu metal rarely features guita ...

guitars". The review stated that the album's "complicated tone... gets blunted in the record's production," and notes the use of "stock hip-hop beats", "clumsy

synth bass Keyboard bass (shortened to keybass and sometimes referred as a synth bass) is the use of a smaller, low-pitched keyboard with fewer notes than a regular keyboard or pedal keyboard to substitute for the deep notes of a bass guitar or double bass ...

", "rhythmic elements", "

fuzz bass Fuzz bass is a style of playing the electric bass or modifying its signal that produces a buzzy, distorted, overdriven sound. Overdriving a bass signal significantly changes the timbre, adds higher overtones (harmonics), increases the susta ...

", "distorted

power chord A power chord , also called a fifth chord, is a colloquial name for a chord on guitar, especially on electric guitar, that consists of the root note and the fifth, as well as possibly octaves of those notes. Power chords are commonly pla ...

s", "harp loops", and lyrical content involving concepts like "generational trauma, mental illness, and sexual violence". At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an average score of 58, based on 5 reviews. The album was criticized by ''

Cracked Cracked may refer to: Television * ''Cracked'' (British TV series), a 2008 British comedy-drama television series that aired on STV * ''Cracked'' (Canadian TV series), a 2013 Canadian crime drama series that aired on CBC * "Cracked", a Season 8 ( ...

'' magazine for "tone-deaf levels of African American cultural appropriation." The song "Hell's Gate" incorporates elements from traditional slave songs, which the magazine called a "bewildering" choice.

Track listing

Charts

References

2020 albums CocoRosie albums Marathon Artists albums {{2020s-album-stub