Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune
Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune is a studio album by Swamp Dogg. It was released via Joyful Noise Recordings on September 7, 2018. It peaked at number 7 on the "Billboard" Heatseekers Albums chart, as well as number 28 on the Independent Albums chart. Production. The album was inspired by Kanye West's "808s & Heartbreak". After Swamp Dogg and MoogStar recorded a rough version of the album, Ryan Olson and Justin Vernon spent several years "refining, fine-tuning, and deconstructing" these recordings. The album includes the cover versions of "Answer Me, My Love" and "Star  Dust". In a 2018 interview with "Los Angeles Times", Swamp Dogg said, "It's the best thing I've done since the '70s." Music videos. Music videos were created for "I'll Pretend", "Lonely", "Sex with Your Ex", and "Star Dust". Critical reception. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 74, based on 8 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Mark Deming of AllMusic wrote, "with "Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune", Swamp Dogg takes a very deep dive into the electronic side of contemporary pop , hip-hop, and R&B, and he predictably pushes it to the wall." Elias Leight of "Rolling Stone" wrote, "On "Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune"s best songs, [Ryan] Olson's synth-heavy backdrops evoke the late Eighties, landing somewhere between early Chicago house music and twitchy hip-hop." Jon Pareles of "The New York Times" commented that "Swamp Dogg sets off into a bizarre, unsettled realm of computer-manipulated vocals and surreal, anything-can-happen electronic backdrops." Stephen M. Deusner of "Pitchfork" wrote, "The experiment succeeds because Swamp Dogg delivers on all three aspects of his album title: the ecstasies of  love, the misery of loss, and the way Auto-Tune can be used to magnify those feelings." "Mojo" placed it at number 56 on the "Top 75 Albums of 2018" list. Personnel. Credits adapted from liner notes.