I'm also catching up, but I'm finally done listening with this group. I wanted to post live reviews, but did most of my listening in my subway commutes, so here are the compiled thoughts.
liamcool
I find your list incredibly hard to classify. There was stuff there that I really really loved, and stuff that didn’t work that well for me (generally the screaming songs). Like others say, though, I think you did a great job in combining the harder rock stuff with some softer/mellower songs. I slightly preferred the first section, especially the Hum - Neko Case - Daryl Hall combination. The Owen Pallett song was one of my favorite ones in your list, I need to check his work more closely. I liked the Silkworm song as a closer - perhaps not your typical final song, but it worked pretty well given the overall sound of your list.
namkcuR
I really loved the concept and the execution in your list. Probably my favorite thing so far in the competition. I had not read the blurb immediately before listening, so at one point I thought: “wow, there are lots of female singers, this is good”. And then remembered that was your concept. It reminds me a bit of Ashley’s idea for the previous DI (songs with women names on their titles). You included an incredible amount of songs that I really love, so it’s hard to point my favorite parts. The jazzy ending was perfectly done. The transition from Ella to that Lady Gaga song was incredible. If I have one criticism, it’s the beach house to lykke li transition, but it’s incredibly hard to segue that beach house song into anything… I didn’t realize Julie Delpy sang, although the internet tells me she also sang at some point in the Before trilogy. Anyways, fantastic job.
phanan
I thought yours was a very good list, even though synth pop is a bit hit or miss with me. I really enjoyed the sexier side of your playlist, stuff like Chromatics (XX might have worked nicely next to them), M83, Haerts (I hear some Lykke Li in her voice). The more distinctly 80s sound in other parts of it was not bad, but it’s a genre I enjoy in small doses, so parts of it have conflated together in my mind. It picked up really well towards the end, and I actually really loved the closing duo. I will definitely check out Monogen, this is right up my alley (and again, that sexy sound that works so well in this list).
Cut Irish Bono
Lots of great songs in your playlist, including some all time classics, but I thought it was not as cohesive as some of the other lists here. I generally like genre-hopping in this kind of competition, but some of it was perhaps a bit abrupt (Megaphonic to Beatles to National comes to mind). That said, I did really love some of the songs you added. I’ve heard Grace countless time, and yet The Last Goodbye was somewhat surprising out of the album context , so it worked well. Black Star is a top-10 Radiohead song for me, so great. And two playlists in the same group somehow contain Eels, which I didn’t know. Will need to check it out.