wow these guys are pretty scary! they live in Germany (like the nazis)! someone dies in the first song! watch out!!

rating: D+

Lil' Wayne- Tha Carter III

Lil Wayne- Tha Carter III

So instead of a BEST OF THE DECADE list, I'm going to focus on all the negativity of the last X annum and write about the worst albums released between 2000-2009. These albums contributed to the overarching karma deficit of the world, with television reality mega-hit "Joisey Shore" being a painful reminder that more bad albums have come out in the last decade than good, and that we are suffering from a major karmic deficit. I think if this PRO-JECT actually concludes, and I have sufficiently delved into what this beautiful and dimpled chin writer at Solid Little Rock James concludes is the decade's compost, maybe I'll write about the good albums!?!?!?!?! Hahaha, no one reads this and nobody cares, but I FELT COMPELLED TO DELIVER A STATEMENT OF INTENT. Sincerity and a genuine character should not only endear you to me, but make all of these reviews solid little coozy fireside chats! Please child....come closer.....

With no further interruption, the first record I'm going to slag is Lil' Wayne's grammy nominated, magna von magnusson opus, Tha Carter III. No, this isn't about being iconoclastic, this is about throwing a life preserver to one of rap hop's biggest stars and begging him not to destroy himself before he can save all of humankind from Robert Christgau's final form (Not Safe for Anyone, and yes, the search term I put in was Giant Gay Man, and no, I don't meant that homophobically). Tha Carter III's main problem is that it was released after Lil' Wayne became the most critically lauded, prolific mixtape rapper of all time over the span of 2 years. As a result, the entire album is a hyper-produced brick and mortar'd beat sample of Wayne's ego. 16 tracks of codeinenated lyrics about how Lil' Wayne is the absolute best rapper in the entire world. Seriously, if you're into drinking games, start from 3 Peat and drink Robitussin everytime Lil' Wayne raps about him not just being a good rapper, but the best on the whole planet. Not only will your cough be gone, but so will your sense of three dimensional reality. Next, record Da Carter 4...hehehehe.

That isn't to say that there aren't amazing songs on Da Carter 3. A Milli is bass-bursting minimalism with Lil' Wayne's rapping style sharing more in Common (so good in Smoking Aces!!!!!) with Grateful Dead's Dark Star than Notorious B.I.G's The What. 3 Peat and Let The Beat Build are soaked with brimstone spittle over some of the best beats of Wayne's career. All of these songs have classic examples of Wayne's steam of consciousness dalliances with alliteration, consonance, metaphor, semaphore, pastoral imagery and simile. The problem is that the rest of the parts of these tracks, and the rest of the tracks on the album, especially Dr. Carter, are basically the scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where all those cultists are worshipping Khali, and the guy rips the human sacrifices' heart out. Only, all of the cultists are Lil' Wayne and the guy who rips the heart out is also Lil Wayne and the guy who gets his heart ripped out is also Lil' Wayne and Khali is also Lil' Wayne!!!!! If Lil' Wayne could go on the Lil' Wayne Tonight Show and be interviewed by Lil' Wayne, it'd still be the most viewed show on television but it'd only make Lil' Wayne more fucking crazy and self-obsessed.

You listen to songs like "Like the Beat Build," and while the term mainly appears as a lyrical theme, imagine if the producers actually increased the tension and intensity of the beat and samples as Lil' Wayne's delivery reaches full crescendo? Instead, the song is simplified in many ways and has a short breakdown where Lil' Wayne utters many of his us against them knocks of "I replenish, they (all other rappers and haters) diminish." Dr. Carter is all about Lil' Wayne self-inserting himself into the rap pantheon amongst his heroes and influences, and he fails to sound like a confident and assured rapper, appearing more like a braggart wannabe who name drops for street credibility. While one may argue that it's just a factor of Lil' Wayne's down to earth, laid back conversational side, is this the song you really want to play by Lil' Wayne: him lounging around with his budz and comparing himself to Kanye and Andre 3000? Oh, and I can relate to the song, because as a caucasian mastermind writer, I am also a legendary wordsmith! At the very least, there's no current measurable statistic of Lil' Wayne influencing the youth demographic to perform auto-felattio.

Which is ultimately why the album is so frustration (POTENTIAL). Lil' Wayne is awesome in so many ways, from his syncopated, shapeshifting delivery, to the absurd but actually intelligent rhyme themes and lyrical changes. This is a guy who's mixtapes are so popular because he takes other people's beats and destroys them by supplanting their rhymes with his. Even Lollipop is one of the best Strip Club songs of it's time, but who wants to listen to an album where almost every single second is packed with Lil' Wayne sucking his own dick forever in the hip hop version of the Ourosboros? How can a new listener pick up the Carter and not feel the least bit alienated that the guy everyone's talking about isn't going to wait to be crowned, making sure that you know he's the new king of rap? The fact that he is so critically acclaimed and that besides his Kanye, DJ Khaled raps, his ascent happened outside of the pop universe, as he appeared on internet released mixed tapes like Da Draught 3, Da Dedication 2, or his under the radar hit Da Carter 2? It's basically the equivalent of everyone in the world telling you he's good and then you liking him, is that what happened here?

The reason then, that this album is one of the worst albums of the decade is because it's a painting of Rome in decline, a civilization sill majestic and monumental but corrupt in the belly and brain. Lil' Wayne is tripping off his own-self importance instead of cough medication. If his next release, Rebirth, a rock-based auto-tune album where Lil' Wayne, I'm not fucking kidding, plays guitar, is any indication, he's so far gone in his narcissistic psychosis that 2009 may be the year that marked Lil' Wayne flying past Saturn and disappearing into a drug or personality induced black hole. Now, his last released internet mixtape "No Ceilings" does have a few tracks that are definitely a lyrical return to form, but the very fact is that Lil' Wayne's talent has a self-imposed ceiling based entirely on his own self-obsession. I can only wonder if the best rap album never made is some sort of Lil' Wayne Danger Mouse space beat album, where Lil' Wayne's choice of drink is blended Adderal and he actually produces something consistent, blistering, without the self-inflated bravado of someone who may not entirely be operating on the same terrestrial plane of existence, and I mean that in the worst possible way.

Rating: Lil'' Wayne 1982-2009

Download: Lil' Wayne- Put Some Keys On That Bitch

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

At last, Phoenix releases an album that isn't going to have anyone looking back and saying, "My, wasn't that just quite the underappreciated little record." What changed? I'll tell you. These songs are simply the most anthemic they have ever unleashed upon the music listening public. Just totally massive, reclaiming the unstoppable quality of "Too Young" nearly a whole decade after the fact. Which is not to say that Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is an obvious pick for best Phoenix album. It just sees them finally piecing a number of elements together that hadn't necessarily gelled so well on previous outings.

The band is still favoring guitar based rock music, but also allows keyboards to make a triumphant return. The remaining guitar parts tend to click along with the basslines rather than provide any of the gritty rock revival jangle found on It's Never Been Like That, while the synths act as a heavenly buzzy stream for everything to happily float along. Such arrangements and the modern yet crystal clear production that they're filtered through reveal Phoenix's remarkable talent for crafting moments that can allow their songs to truly breathe, whether these moments are found in dynamic switches or in the blissfully soaring turns taken by the vocal melodies. The latter is what makes the second half of this record so special, as the group makes a potentially stifling choice to squeeze five songs of similar tempo all together but the way they all stop running together after a few listens and the individual hooks start swimming around your brain begging you to place them in their rightful positions makes it seem more like a nonstop love fest for your pop music boner than anything else. I have witnessed a number of people getting behind each of these five tracks as the great unsung hero of the album, some saying "Armistice," some "Countdown," some "Girlfriend" (my personal favorite), some "Lasso," some "Rome." All are equally deserving of the title.

And then there's that first half. Who other than true masters would kick off their record with two ass groping hit singles, an album track that's sexier than either, and then a seven and a half minute slice of tension and release synth brilliance that sounds like... bubblegum Steve Reich? What might happen if every mainstream pop/rock hit had to pass through the hands of Emeralds before hitting the radio? Something like one or both of those. And it works. Everything here does, in fact. The whole record is a delicious slab of melodic wonderment that reminds one of just how pleasurable (and surprisingly durable) the best crafted pop can be. Stick this one in the changer with Love vs. Money and Raditude and 2009 is gonna start seeming like the apex of that hooks upon hooks upon hooks spectrum of music enjoyment.

Phoenix isn't just some shitty indie rock band. They're pros and they're cranking out the instant pop classics with more confidence than ever. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix should be huge enough for your mom to own a copy or two. I used to say that about Spoon albums but those are starting to sound like coma inducing garbage when put up against Phoenix's decade of would-have-been-hits-in-a-popular-music-landscape-that's-more-fair-than-the-one-we-have-going-at-the-moment (not to crap all over the current popular music landscape... just sayin'.) Throughout the past decade, we've seen them continually enhance the greatness that was there from the very start. Here's to this gloriously reliable melody factory keeping it up well into the '10s.

Rating: A

Download Link: Incubus - "Stellar"

Phoenix - It's Never Been Like That

What the hell is this crap? Where did the keyboards go? What's with the shit sounding drums and angular guitar jangle rattling all over the place? These guys are lucky to be such masters of the economically crafted pop Long Player because I can imagine more than 10 songs of this ugliness getting a bit tedious. Don't get me wrong, Phoenix's decision to drop rock bombs where there were none before is an interesting one, especially when combined with the continued refinement of their now trusty aesthetic, which is as breezy, lightweight (in a good way), and classic soft pop groping as ever. This alone makes the INBLT songs stand out in the post-Strokes/Franz dark ages during which they were released but does not change the fact that tinniness in the sonics department makes it hard to overlook more than a few of these songs' respective failures to sport a verse/chorus combination as killer as the one in "Long Distance Call." That's not to say that every track here doesn't have at least something going for it, but I still tune out less than halfway through the thing. It sounds like shit and tracks eight and nine are unnecessarily long enough to be on the Julian Casablancas solo album. Pretty lazy review as per usual, but I can't say that this album really does much for me as the sort of thing whose abundance of solid hooks and presentation of said hooks make want to listen to it ever.

Rating: Still a B+. Great band.

Download Link: Flobots - "Handlebars

Phoenix - LIVE! ThirtyDaysAgo

Ths is an okay live album, good tunes w/ solid drumming and some extended jamming for that live feel.. . I gotta go now, though, sorry. My ride's out front... seeya!

Rating: Like a B or B-... probably never gonna play it again.

Download Link:

Phoenix - Alphabetical

The "great despite being uneven" verdict presented in my United review must have served as a sharp kick in the butt for these mildly unattractive French males. Phoenix saddled up and packed their 2004 followup with almost nothing but highlights. Smooth. Laidback. Hooks worming their way into all orifices of one's body. Every track grooving relentlessly. Not much rock, but that's okay. The most venomous sounding thing here is "I'm An Actor" and it's kind of stupid. Sometimes a band just has to aspire to be a more scaled down New Radicals or a more restrained Maroon 5 and all I have to say is more power to 'em. The three song run of "Love For Granted," "Victim Of The Crime," and "(You Can't Blame It On) Anybody" is pleasing beyond belief and if you can resist slipping into such sexy blue eyed soul concoctions, then I really don't know what to say. For my money, this is the finest collection of tunes Phoenix has yet to pull together. A lovely record that will turn your swag on.

Rating: I give this recording an "A."

Download Link: "If It's Not WIth You"... Jasper loved this one. Shame he had to die so young.

Phoenix - United

What the hell was I and everyone else doing in the year 2000? How did it take Phoenix six years to release an album that made a few people other than the internet's nerdiest pop fans and people who bought the Shallow Hal original soundtrack album listen up? And then three more years for them to get the kind of high profile recognition as "one of the great pop/rock acts of our time" that they deserved from the very start? I will be examining their career trajectory via a rigorous five day long seminar taking place on this very blog. It will consist of half assed reviews of the band's catalog and will probably be interrupted by unrelated reviews.

Alright, United was their debut album. The common consensus seems to be that the timeless pop classics "Too Young" and "If I Ever Feel Better" are all that's really anchoring down this messy album of just kind of okay half finished jams. Now, this is the sort of conventional wisdom that I just cannot fully get behind. Sure, the thing feels more like a mixtape than a classic pop full length. 11 tracks and three of them are instrumentals, with two of those being under two minutes long and serving as nothing more than bookends. What's left over are two brilliant singles, a nine minute funky squaredance number that will have you sweatin' up a storm ("Funky Squaredance"), and four songs that sound a bit slighter than what this band is truly capable of. But let me tell you something here... those songs are really damn good. "On Fire" had eternally burrowed its way into my consciousness after only a few listens and now I find myself lounging around my house and inexplicably singing its breezy yet massive fucking hook and enjoying myself immensely. If it sounds like b-side backwash, it's the backwash of pop music kings. Not to mention the lovely ballad "Honeymoon" and the possibly proto Strokes rock drive of "Party Time" (I'm reaching here, I know.) And who can deny the delightfulness of the melody on "Summer Days."

And there you have it. The whole album is good. Much like Paul McCartney & Wings' Wild Life LP, even though there's a puzzling ratio of bullshit filler to actual songs, the whole thing works as an under 40 minute pop full length because the melodicism is always A+. And when your "filler" tracks include the laidback grooves of "Embuscade" with its totally bitchin' sax solo... well, that's hardly something to complain about. Just what was the deal with Europeans back then and their knack for cranking out blissfully well crafted synth laden pop for faggots? Did these guys and Zoot Woman and Daft Punk all just have a more solid grasp on the classixx? Had poptimism simply not flourished yet? Fleetwood Mac, Hall & Oates, Wings, New Order, Prince, Todd Rundgren... how could any American live with themselves without acknowledging the work of these masters? Plenty must have, I guess. God bless Phoenix!

Rating: A- listening experience. Even though the cover looks like one of those hair metal compilations you see advertised on TV, I'm just always in the mood for this recording.

Download Link: "My Girls"

Kevin Drumm - Imperial Horizon

After a few out the ass cassette releases of somewhat irritating noise, Kevin Drumm returns to the not quite tranquil hum of 2008's feature film length career highlight Imperial Distortion. Kind of the same basic thing as that release. Sounds like new age crap but then you turn it up and your speakers start rattling because some guttural bass frequencies are gradually simmering to the top. Drumm is all about shaping and organizing sounds in a way that has some kind of physical effect on the listener, relieving tension that you were too transfixed to notice was there. The moment when you realize that layers have been stripped away and all that's left are a few high pitched tones hovering in the air... or did they just come in out of nowhere? They must have. That's right, your mind was too wrapped up in the sounds to allow you to fully process such a thing.

It's called "minimalism." You wouldn't understand it. I'm just gonna stop right here.

Rating: Kind of feels like a "bonus track" even though it's an hour long. Obviously, any/all of Kevin Drumm's "major" releases are worth owning and devoting much time to so I'm not gonna tell you to avoid this one so yeah, one of 2009's best.

Download Link: Enjoy!

Bear in Heaven- Beast Rest Forth Mouth

Bear in Heaven- Beast Rest Forth Mouth

Words of warnings, dear Constant Reader, the siren call of Pitchfork Media Incorporated lead me to the eruditic rocky shores of Bear in Heaven!

One of the latest albums to emerge from the experimental New Yark scene, this meaningful jam core album hits with so many delicious jabs and blissful uppercuts that I cannot do anything but be its punching bag. Indeed, there is no better way to listen to the immediate first four tracks or so and feel the beckoning urge to get precipitously eviscerated on some sort of chemical alteration and start thinking about your meaningless mortality (Not only will all of us die, our shithead kids will spend our inheritance on awful technology like hooking your iPod up to a flushing toilet bowl so that Rough Ryders Anthem comes out every time you take a dump). The third track, "You do You," begins with a rising high hat beat and when the full drums and keyboard arpeggios kick in, you just want to lie down and surrender yourself to a sexually overpowering existentialist blitzkrieg bop straight out of the annals of Camus, and Frederich "Not as fastidiously corpulent as Orson Welles" Nietszche. That's not to say that the music itself is pretentious at all, and that although the textures really rely on keyboards and drums to remind you of all those late nights spent thinking about a past your post-adolescent self refuses to regret, the themes and lyrics of the songs are simple and direct and rely distinctly on pop-like repetition with an interesting developmental structure throughout most songs.

I was blown away with the way the album is persistently dark and moody without utilizing much "tear drenching reverb (Hahahaha)" on anything besides the vocals, or at the very least, utilizing effects OBVIOUSLY to fake the texture of a song feeling IMPORTANT to someone in their most fragile states of being close to the edge of reconsidering their prior and future actions. I can't imagine how I would listen to this in a group setting because the songs themselves have pulverizing drum and keyboard attacks that make me feel at my most solitary and reflective. Only Solitaire, eh, Dear Constant Reader?

I don't really know how to contextualize current rock music with both proggy and poppy influences in relations to douchelord bands like The Decemberists, The Dirty Projectors (Whose primary creative force is King Douche of the Omnitaint) but Bear in Heaven sounds relevant, progressive and engaging without appearing to clutch and seize the works of blatantly popular indie trends while winking so hard that it would create a closed eye which may never open.

Please listen to this, Dear Constant Reader, and for fuck's sake enjoy it! Then read the rest of Solid Little Rock Jams all day every day because clearly a bunch of amateurs writing record reviews are the best use of your time since we obviously have an agenda of advancing all of our favorite little indie-micro communities to the infinitely profound and deep listening masses!

Rating: It's all I've been playing lately and I've been caught air drumming to this and singing, which I usually only do during In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins! dun dun dununu dunun dunudn dah dah

Download: Bear in Heaven- Beast Rest Forth Mouth

The Flaming Lips - Embryonic

I can't tell if it's becoming easier or more difficult to pinpoint exactly when the Flaming Lips became one of the most detestable bands in all of modern music. Some might point towards 2006's At War With The Mystics, an album almost universally acknowledged as an underwhelming, poorly produced mess of cutesy bullshit. Others might realize that the cutesy bullshit stretches back to Clouds Taste Metallic, a fine record that presents the group at the peak of its powers as a performing/songwriting ensemble but also plants the seeds of Wayne & Co.'s ambitions to merge the twee with the self-important, ambitions that they clearly have no plans to downplay any time soon.

You just cannot fucking deny The Soft Bulletin as the dividing line in this group's catalog, though. On that album, the Lips traded their guitars for megaphones through which they would broadcast their attempts to make a record that could join OK Computer, Deserter's Songs, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, and Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space as yet another ultra-serious piece of melancholy "art rock" that might fulfill music listeners' needs to have their very own Pet Sounds/Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band/Dark Side of The Moon of the '90s. Did they succeed? Probably. Well, most people would say, "Definitely." The album has since been established as their definitive contribution to the pantheon of critically acclaimed pop LPs, the Lips record that tops lists of people's favorites of the '90s and of all time.

And I suppose that's fine. The Soft Bulletin is a nice balance of the pleasant/enjoyable, the pleasant/slightly more enjoyable, and the fucking horrendous. But the fact that they made it at all, coupled with the fact that they continued to make music after it, was the Lips' greatest mistake. Wayne Coyne never put away his megaphone, nor did he change out of that damn suit. In case you've been denying it for the past decade, Wayne as LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT MORTALITY preacher/Christ/God figure is here to stay. As is the bubble. And the animal costumes. And the confetti. And the "unlikely" live cover choices of popular songs. And the decision to continue pandering to every one of their fucking worthless fans who follows them around the country watching them trot out the same gimmicky live show at every bomb threat worthy hippy death camp festival, playing the same shitty songs shittily (lullaby rendition of "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Pt. 1," anyone?), completely disregarding the fact that they once approached art as something more than a tedious afterthought to a public reputation centered around cloying faux "psychedelic" imagery that appeals to the sort of people who enjoy overly pleasant muzak with embarrassing lyrics.

"But this new album is different! They're freakier than ever!!!" No, no, no, no. Have some actual standards for once. So what if they made an album that's way too long. So what if it's noisier than usual. So what if everything is tastelessly loud in an effort to make the listener forget that most of these tracks are just a bunch of worthless dicking around and that it's a goddamn miracle when one is able to decipher even a trace of melody or compositional impressiveness from any of the tracks that might be construed as actual "songs." Embryonic is a failure. Don't tell me that the thing is intended to be cold, distorted, and distant like XTRMNTR. Primal Scream still managed to own every one of the corners of the pop/non-pop music spectrum that they explored throughout that recording, whether that includes genres (free jazz, New Order style balladry, Stonesy rock 'n roll, hip hop (yeah, I like "Pills"... sod off), big beat, etc.) or the most basic no-brainer musical elements (melody, groove, production.) They weren't just toying with confrontational sonic elements for the sake of it. All the Lips manage is a couple one chord drum heavy grooves that plod along in a way that is intriguing for being closer to '68-'71 Pink Floyd than the Silver Apples/krautrock fixation of recent Radiohead or Portishead (two groups whose most recent works have also appropriated droney psych elements), but is ultimately ruined by the group's inability to seize any grasp on atmosphere and dynamic range that any of the previously mentioned acts have.

And that's the main problem with this album and the main reason that I can't figure out why the general consensus seems to be that Embryonic somehow isn't a pile of shit. This album does not accomplish what it sets out to do/what a listenable 70 minute double LP should set out to do. It never transfixes the listener to a point where the running time becomes justified because, as was challenged by Zaireeka and depressingly cleared up by this release, the Flaming Lips are not capable of being some kind of ultra-freaky psych/noise/kraut/funk/insanity juggernaut. Remember "Hell's Angels Cracker Factory"? The 23 minute cacophonous mess only available on the CD version of Telepathic Surgery? It was tedious and went nowhere, a compost heap of guitar wankery and effects galore. As evidenced by the string of albums that followed, I think they recognized the value in letting their experimental tendencies shine through their beautifully crafted melodic pop/rock songs rather than fueling the "poor man's Butthole Surfers" tag that gets slapped on much of their '80s work. And now they've regressed, not back to the '80s, but to a fantasy version of that decade where "Hell's Angels Cracker Factory" would have been as hotly anticipated as Christmas On Mars and their fans would have paid 20 dollars to own it on a limited edition pink vinyl flexi disc.

But it's 2009 and no longer charming that the Flaming Lips have little concept of what makes an engaging "psych jam," especially since Embryonic is bound to be misconstrued as a work of mad genius from these clownish cult leaders of poor taste. Sure, the Lips tend to favor minor keys and distortion on this album, but it's not "bad trip psychedelia." "A superficially focused approximation of what that might entail" is certainly more accurate. And as much as I'd love to be able to throw out my biases and enjoy this music for what it is, a song like "I Can Be A Frog" is completely indefensible, especially when you imagine sweaty, smelly females in the front row of a Lips concert emotionally singing along with their eyes closed and heads slowly shaking back and forth (I've witnessed this happen during "Do You Realize??" with my own two eyes. It's more depressing than when I realized that everyone I know someday will die.) If you can somehow listen to this song and not cringe, I mean really cringe (it takes a lot for music to make me do this), then it might be time to meet your maker once and for all. It's not some kind of balance between sorrow and playfulness. It's a subpar minor key ballad whose lyrics are too fucking retarded and high in the mix to ignore, even if you try to.

But that's one song. What about the others? There's a few on here. Five, maybe? That's probably pushing it. As I stated before, the occasional Floydian groove pops up every now and then ("See The Leaves," "Convinced of The Hex"), but they don't do shit. They just kind of exist, starting and ending a few minutes later. The experience of listening to them is entirely empty. Sounds are carelessly piled on top of one another. Even solid rhythmic backbones can't elevate them beyond the "just noise" level. "Silver Trembling Hands" almost gets there, but that's a pretty big "almost."

Everything is too harsh and ugly for the "Instant Karma" inspired Spector wall of sound production to be bearable. "Focus" and "songwriting" get thrown out the window. The almost funky '70s Miles Davis nods aren't given any room to breathe and be effective at all. The noise is amateurish and the pop is half assed. So what does that leave the listener with? Not much more than one of the most forgettable albums in the Flaming Lips' admittedly rich discography, as well as the unfortunate realization that in this age of increasingly desperate attempts at dumping undeserving wads of crap into the pop/rock canon, such a conscious attempt at creating a sprawling double LP in the classic vein of (Wayne has said so himself) The White Album, Physical Graffiti, and Sandinista! might tragically go down in history as one. If you are interested in some recent droning mindfuck records that take you on sprawling musical journeys like you've never experienced by enveloping every facet of your being with glorious sound, check out Oneida's Rated O, Beak>'s Beak>, The Hospitals' Hairdryer Peace... hell, you might as well listen to the new Akron/Family album if you want to hear a band with too many ideas stumbling to not embarrass itself. Or just do what any sensible person has been doing on a daily basis for years now and play Super Ae and Vision Creation Newsun at full volume again and again and again. Just don't mistakenly think that suffering through Embryonic more than once in an attempt to find something even remotely enjoyable is worth the time and effort.

Rating: Pretty much the opposite of an album that's any good at all.

Download Link: Saves The Day - "Through Being Cool"

The Band - The Band

Despite recognizing the greatness of The Band's most widely loved songs for as long as I've been familiar with their position in the pop/rock canon, I was always a bit wary of checking out any full length LPs. After all, despite all the stellar tunes and awesome guest musicians in The Last Waltz, there's still something about these dudes that just drains all the fun out of anything their music touches. If The Band were a color, they would be the drab poopy brown of this eponymous sophomore release. If they were a time period other than the exhausted "return to the ROOTS" post-psychedelia era during which they were most active and influential, they would be the mid 1800's, jamming out on a slave plantation a couple Victorian mansions down from Neil Young cranking out the Harvest classics. If they were an age, they would be fucking old. Even with all the coke and pussy and rock star excess, these guys still dreamed of being elderly and boring and having mustaches.

Music From Big Pink, The Band's five star classic debut album from 1968, does not epitomize these qualities to the most successful degree. It's too good. Too melodic. Too sweet. The Band, though. The shadow of Dylan lingers no longer. Robbie Robertson is here to write some songs and not sing anything because as we heard in "To Kingdom Come," his charming crap voice is downright Grateful Dead worthy. Anyways, this album sucks. I can't remember how any of the songs go, save for "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Jawbone," "Rag Mama Rag," "Up On Cripple Creek," and a few seconds of "Whispering Pines." Not all of those are even that great, though. This hookless crap is just a bunch of honky tonk pianos and dicks being slapped against butter churners. Makes John Wesley Harding sound like happy hardcore!!!

Rating: 0/5

Download Link: All 5 of the Dam-Funk albums... I've been playing these all morning. Great shit.

Eric Clapton - Pilgrim

I glanced at the back of this CD and was shocked to see that it was released in 1998. All this time I was sure that the only reason I ever bought it was because it was part of the confused "adult rock" phase I went through between 1993 and 1995 or so, where I listened to WXRT every day, got into artists like Lyle Lovett and Los Lobos, and grew to appreciate the more nuanced qualities of the Dave Matthews Band. By 1998 I was pretty much obsessed with Sonic Youth, Stereolab, My Bloody Valentine and The Orb. Why would I have purchased this album?

Eric Clapton's Unplugged was the first CD I ever bought with my own money. I have no idea why I did so or if I even knew who the fuck Eric Clapton was at that point. Maybe my friend Neal had some of his CDs, ones probably purloined from his stepbrother, the young man he clung to with abject devotion following the divorce of his parents and his bitter astrangement from his dad. Neal had chronic acne with festering pimples that constantly secreted bacteria-infested oil, violently took the Chevy side of the eternal "Chevy vs. Ford" war in regular unprovoked outbursts, and took out his anger on his younger brother on a daily basis in beatings which, in hindsight, bordered on sexual abuse. He also listened to country and whatever Christian rock our youth pastor had at the time, desperately seeking a new father figure and striving to impress and emulate potential candidates every chance he could get. He's now married and "works for the county" or something and tragically has spawned at least two children of his own.

Eventually I broke off my friendship with him and spent the rest of my adolescence as a close friend of his younger brother. We listened to The Cream of Clapton while playing pool in his unfinished basement. We rollerskated on the concrete floors to Siamese Dream and the first Weezer album and all was well. Absolutely none of this explains why I would have heard "My Father's Eyes" and thought to myself "Whoa, this is a good song! I gotta have this album."

I sold this CD long ago and picked it up again at the library yesterday. I listened to about half of it before returning it a few hours ago. The last song has a late-90s trip-hop intro but veers into smooth jazz. Is this really the same hungry young man that brought us "Sunshine of Your Love" and "Change the World"?

Notably, the album cover was designed by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, character designer for Evangelion, FLCL, and many more animated series and films. I just picked up the new Eva movie last week and it's pretty great, but I would think so wouldn't I?

Rating:



Download: none

Homostupids - The Load

It doesn't get much more hilariously brutal than Homostupids. Two years after The Intern took the underground by storm, these sultans of swing return with another overpowering blast of neanderthal tantrum hardcore. And it's all over in less than 20 minutes! Once again, it sounds like a bunch of janitors spitting all over Dischord's entire '80s roster. I feel like the production sparkles a little bit more this time around, though. And it suits the occasional snatches of synth like at the end of "The Glow/The Edge" and in "Therapist," which sounds like the Blank Dogs guy taking a sizzling poop. A few of the rhythms on The Load certainly do suggest an affinity for the stop-start "cyberpunk" leanings of Chrome, as well as fellow carriers of that band's torch such as the Daily Void or maybe Jay Reatard back when he screamed everything. They throw in some tape manipulation, bird sound effects, and even a few slow parts like the one that follows the surprisingly emotional main chord progression in "Baking The Wolf," but everything still pretty much rips all the way through. As much as I loved The Intern, I can see this new one permanently replacing it in my mind. Can't wait to hear them figure out new and exciting ways to completely tear shit up. Lovely stuff from a lovely band.

Rating: Instant classic!!! Between this record, Vile Gash, and Mentally Challenged, face slashingly abrasive hardcore punk and I are tighter than ever before in 2009.

Download Link: I dunno where it is.

Various Artists - The World's Lousy With Ideas Vol. 8

You don't have to sit through tediously shitty albums by Sic Alps, Tyvek, Thee Oh Sees, Times New Viking, Blank Dogs, and other heavy-hitters in the nü lo-fi crap revival. Just throw on this 30 minute release for a snapshot of the scene in action. The shitgaze Nuggets? No New York? Fat Music For Fat People? DFA Compilation #2? Pick your favorite! The variety of bands here is essential, in my humble opinion. Having said that, everything still sounds the same except the Pink Reason song, an apocalyptic juggernaut that bulldozes everything in its path, including the eight songs that came before it. Like a fucking hurricane. Watch the danger birds fly over head. Look, there's Cortez dancing across the water. Are you catching my drift here? I guess it doesn't sound that much like Crazy Horse but it's the first thing I thought of. The Intelligence and Vivian Girls songs are good, too.

Rating: One of the great musical artifacts of our time. The other volumes are even better because there aren't as many songs.

Download Link: Here it is.

Space- Magic Fly

Space- Magic Fly

This is a hardcore album about space. Not the genre hardcore, but what would actually probably be the Apollo soundtrack by Brian Eno if Brian Eno had the fucking cajones to do enough coke to kill Gary Busey.

References to actors become dated after a decade of non-use! (Repeat three times, go into chorus)

I'm not kidding, this is a fucking awesome album and the theme of outer space dictates how all the instruments should sound and play. Apparently the song Magic Fly was a huge disco hit, and that people actually "got down to it" in a place of "recreational song and dance marked by the use of mirrored balls, non-lighting and serious facial hair."

Isn't it stupid that when talking about anything hardcore, I have to differentiate a genre from a descriptive superlative? We're all a bunch of pussies writing about music that we listen to alone because nobody likes us. We write things about the intangible qualities of music and how they affect our tangible cochlea connected to our beating, bloody brains. Think about how bloody and gross your brain is, and then think about that same brain on hardcore music! Time to throw out your Rites of Spring albums before your brain resembles Granfalloon from Symphony of the Night, a rocking Castlevania adventure. Actually, that would be pretty awesome and if I could have zombies falling off my brain I might have more marketable skills than I currently do (ZERO).

What I like best about this album is that it seems like it should appear in some sort of Garth Mahrengi's Dark Place episode, which takes place in the future and Garth Mahrengi is a space occultist and scientist.

I hope Leif doesn't get mad that I updated after taking a two year break!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating: An essential must own album filled with b-sides and remixes of songs you already love to love. Order today for three easy payments of $420, $6.66 and $8008135!

Download: The whole fucking album of course!

Evangelista - Prince of Truth

I think I read in some review (Dusted Magazine?) of this album that Carla Bozulich got pneumonia right before the sessions and so she had to do all her vocals separately and edit all the noise making and soundscapery that she wasn't able to oversee into something that met her satisfaction. So there's some explanation as to why this isn't as explosive as last year's Hello, Voyager. Even if the compositions here don't quite meet the standard set by that album (nor is that really Bozulich's aim), there is still a lot on Prince of Truth to chew on.

The music here is slow, droney, and beautifully recorded. The accordion or harmonium or whatever is probably what is earning this all the Tom Waits comparisons, but the experience of listening to these tracks is more akin to one of those SUNN O))) side projects or Scott Walker's avant-garde classical curio And Who Shall Go To The Ball And What Shall Go To The Ball. Lots of semi-improvised mood pieces to lose yourself in and maybe end up falling asleep to, but with plenty of variations in the dark noise brutality level. "Tremble Dragonfly" is pretty representative of what most of the album sounds like, a restrained dirge full of carefully plucked upright bass and mournful string arrangements with murmured Bozulich vocals. Throw this bad boy into some headphones and launch yourself into a richly unsettling world of sound! And if that's not enough for you, just stop on by the balls deep drone of nine and half minute long closer "On The Captain's Side," which isn't quite the knockout epic death/life slab that Hello, Voyager's title track was, but its windy rumblings and double tracked vocal sighs are welcome, nonetheless.

"The Slayer" and "You Are Jaguar"... these are the rockers. "I Lay There In Front of Me Covered In Ice"... this is the closest thing to a real song with a real vocal melody. "Iris Didn't Spell" and "Crack Teeth" kind of sound like Talk Talk or Bark Psychosis because of the drums and that harmonium thing (maybe I'm thinking of a melodica, who knows!) And I just named every song on the album, which I must say is actually pretty damn enjoyable. Carla Bozulich is good at making music and working with other people who are also good at making music, yep. Hopefully next time she won't get sick.

Rating: Great stuff here!

Download Link: "I Lay There In Front of Me Covered In Ice"... it's a song. If this isn't dark enough for you, then you'll love the rest even more!

Black Eyes - Cough

Most hardcore punk rockers would disagree, but Cough is way better than that first album they did. What are the differences exactly? "More abstract"... perhaps that will do. "Saxophone"... there certainly is some. A wider variety of moods are (is?) encompassed. Drums are occasionally done away with to splendid effect. Free jazz chaos reigns. What many listeners would describe as a "lack of structure" actually makes things more interesting this time around. It is a shame when bands who are clearly getting better cease making music but who knows, maybe the next album would have sucked. Regardless, Cough captures a fearless band at its most adventurous, and when one considers the sea of mediocre acts soiling the good names of "experimentation" and "abrasiveness," their presence has been missed.

Rating: Really good album.

Download Link:

Black Eyes - Black Eyes

Yelpy no wave that grooves along Fugazi basslines like a more post-hardcore inclined Rapture/Ex Models/Liars. If you need something to mosh to in your basement for half an hour, this LP will suffice. That'll probably make you forget that even though it's well recorded and rocks nonstop, nothing interesting really happens and the whole thing is kinda boring.

Rating: w/e

Download Link: Nothing today.

Skip Tooth - Mindnumbing Alienation

18 minute harsh noise blast by some guy from Denmark, I think? This shit shreds your speakers and lets loose some Gunboat Diplomacy style mulch for the listener to trudge through. I was just listening to it and had no idea that my pirated copy of Zombieland had been playing under it the whole time, that's how DENSE and LOUD this is!!!!!!!! If Kevin Drumm at his Sheer Hellish Miasma/Land of Lurches power electronics peak is the Beatles discography, this shit is Wavves: same basic idea, just rawer.

Rating: It does its job.

Download Link: Skip Tooth - Mindnumbing Alienation [Broken Tapes, 2009]

Kaito - Trust

This is a 2009 minimal (...) techno release on the KOMPAKT label.

It's pretty good.

Rating: Pretty good.

Download Link:

Karate - Clean Hands Go Foul

i was gonna think of something to say about this album while i took a shit. unfortunately it was one of those interminable white knuckle shits that you dont even realize is gonna happen until you sit down and your ass is suddenly in searing pain. so basically this just sounds like a little kid fucking screaming and whining. it probably sounds more like that than any other album. sometimes the bass player plays a note. enjoy

album

Nurse With Wound - Homotopy To Marie

Thanks largely to the miracle of Daylight Savings, last night's Halloween was another one that met its end in bed before 1:30 A.M. But not before enjoying a solid lineup of particularly unsettling LP length musical statements. Beginning the evening was Nico's The Marble Index, closing it out was The Faust Tapes, and smack dab in the middle was the towering Homotopy To Marie. Notable largely for being the first CD purchased by me from renowned Greenwich Village record store Other Music, these five tracks of musique concrète insanity take the nightmarish terror merely hinted at in similar works such as "Revolution 9," We're Only In It For The Money, the aforementioned Faust Tapes, and probably some 20th century "classical music" to its mind fuckingly brutal extreme. Don't fuck with this stuff on acid, guys, you might puncture your soul! During this magical journey, you will encounter somebody dumping a bag of change into your empty skull and rattling it around for a bit, a little girl talking about her period, some klezmer (?) jams, a language that is probably Spanish, a woman angrily shouting, "DON'T BE NAIVE, DARLING," jarring blasts of noise, and other things that might scare your pets. Perhaps "Lynch-ian" would be an apt description, perhaps not. It's bleak, fucked up, and repulsive, in a way that so many of the greatest artworks of the 1980s were.

Rating: Neat album!

Download Link: Neil Young - "Will To Love"... just a great fucking song.

The Jesus Lizard - Head

This band's first four albums just got reissued/remastered but I haven't bought or heard them yet. Last night I just got the urge to throw on my trusty shitty little old fashioned CD copy of Head and let me tell you, this is still an absolutely monstrous record in non-remastered compact disc form.

Goat and Liar are the closest things the Lizard has to acknowledged rock canon classics, but Head, the first LP cut by what pretty much everybody will tell you is the "definitive" incarnation of the band, already finds them balls deep in their signature sound, playing styles, and compositional abilities. There was a time when I suspected that this would be the sound of a band "not quite there," but no, in 1990 they most certainly were there and nowhere else.

While the set of songs here is not as breathtakingly perfect as the nine tracks that make up Goat, this is still an album where more than half the songs are highlights, of Head and of the Lizard's career. "One Evening" is as wonderfully bombastic as any of their album openers. Make your way to a Lizard show before they disappear forever yet again and observe just how pumped up the audience gets when they realize the band up on stage just launched into that song or "7 vs. 8" or "S.D.B.J." And who can forget the heart crumbling slow burner "Pastoral," one of the finest moments in Duane Denison's life as a riff shitting guitar god? You can't get this one anywhere else, not even from "Zachariah" or in the lines of an "Elegy."

Back in the days following the punk/post-punk explosion, one had to wonder if anything new really could have been done with the basic drums + guitar + bass formula. Wipers, Minutemen, Flipper, Black Flag, Big Black, The Birthday Day... these groups were balancing elements so simply and originally that the legions of bands that followed in their collective wake were able to sculpt these elements towards truly next level heights, much like how the blueprints laid out by Chuck Berry, The Stooges, and Black Sabbath would be worshiped and built upon. Maybe back in the day people were saying that the Jesus Lizard "sounded like the Birthday Party," but now we look at modern noise rock bands and say that they "sound like the Jesus Lizard." They got everything right on the first Long Player. And yet they still stuck around to get things righter on the next one. God bless these kings of rock 'n roll.

Rating: ****1/2

Download Link: "7 vs. 8"

Jandek - Skirting The Edge

What the fuck is up with this dude's voice? It's high and pussyish on a bunch of his albums, but on Blue Corpse suddenly the vocals are really deep and sad and manly. The rumors say that it was some other guy but it's the same on all the recent live material, as well, and also on this studio album from December 2008, which either means that it was released in 2008 or 2009, a year that it wasn't actually released in. But you can take that up with the rest of the internet. This album is 51 minutes of Jandek playing an acoustic guitar and rambling about shit for 12, 24 minutes at a time occasionally, damn. Everybody's saying that it's "dark" but I didn't really pay attention to the lyrics. But isn't his music always like that? The Jandek of 2009 might be cranking out the occasional feel good jam, but there are none on this album, that's for sure! Yeah.

Rating: It's okay. All of his stuff has the power to transfix me to at least some degree, I think? Everything I've heard, anyway. There's a lot of music that I'm much less interested in listening to for almost a whole hour than this guy rubbing his cock all over an acoustic guitar and moaning about god knows what. Nevertheless, this is the first Jandek album I've paid less than $4.99 for (exact amount: $0.00) and I'm perfectly fine with that.

Download Link: "I KnowMy Name"

Eagle Twin - The Unkindness of Crows

Yo, this is just some doomy Southern Lord shit. It's pretty dark w/ a sick buzzy guitar tone. Kind of brutal but with the boogie rock undertones that you like. The singer has a manly growl, as well.

It's not as good as the Melvins or Harvey Milk or Led Zeppelin but it sounds okay. I don't want to listen to any albums this year that aren't Weezer's album everything else is twice as long as that one.

Rating:

Download Link: Fox Paws - "Arcadio"

Weezer - Raditude

Not even a year and a half ago, Weezer's overwhelmingly fantastic self-titled comeback release signaled a new era for the group, one that would see them holding nothing back and embracing every not necessarily tasteful ambition burning in the back of their collective head. Weezer was a mission statement, an epiphany, a grand declaration of enlightenment, the sound of a band simply not giving a fuck and choosing to indulge their wildest pop dreams regardless of what grouchy critics and fans might have preferred.

And as I hoped I would be able to say a year and a half later while initially freaking out over them, the freshness of "Heart Songs" and "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" has not faded one bit, yet sadly that of the group's penchant for the unpredictable has. Not much, though. While every announcement of a Lil Wayne guest appearance or zany promotional event or absurd cover choice no longer seems so "wtf????" but more "Oh, there goes Weezer just bein' Weezer," one cannot deny that they're at least trying to outdo themselves in the ridiculousness department. It's to Weezer's credit that these head scratching idiosyncrasies come across so naturally rather than as forced. When naysayers bemoan the fact that "The Weezer that I once knew and loved has been dead for years and they are not coming back any time soon," the victory is on the group's side, as they sound more content and settled into their identity as a band than ever before. The disappointment that many a Blue Album/Pinkerton fan feels no longer arises from having to deal with what they see as the band's failure to produce anything more than a soulless, watered down, bastardized, highly impersonal approximation of what made those albums so enjoyable, but rather from the complete lack of common ground shared between the sensibilities and tastes of these two parties.

And for those who by some unfathomable miracle continue to be consistently pleased by whatever directions the group chooses to take with its career... well, Raditude is, at the very least, ear candy of the most delicious order. Did somebody mention "parties"? Because this album certainly is one! After spending 2008 laying their ambitions for wild 'n crazy good times on the line, Raditude sees Weezer standing by its word and following through with those ambitions. Naturally, the album comes across as considerably less purposeful and audacious than last year's eponymous release. It more closely resembles, say, Long Player exhibit A in what will hopefully be a string of albums that, while presenting the listener with an adventurous batch of successful and/or failed modern pop explorations every time around (as Raditude further proves this era of Weezer to be all about), will inevitably find Weezer assuming the role of "hit factory," the newly embraced "songs about hot chicks and hanging out with your bros" vibe allowing them to knock out compositions in their sleep. This is exactly the sort of carefree, breezy quality that runs through these ten songs, resulting in Weezer's most blatantly summer friendly pop album since 2001's Weezer.

While the slightness of the album as a whole is an essential part of its singular identity within the band's discography, I can't help but feel that the promise of its first four tracks contrasted with the combination of redundancy and occasionally misguided experimentation in the second half builds up to a listening experience that is possibly even more schizophrenic than the style hopping of their self-titled red album. Make no mistake, there is a sense of cohesion running through these songs. Just glance down the tracklisting... "Let It All Hang Out," "Love Is The Answer," "Can't Stop Partying," "The Girl Got Hot." Even when the message of a song like "Can't Stop Partying" is more layered than it seems, the musical and lyrical positivity remains, as if everything in life should resemble a dog flying through the air or a band of 40 year olds titling an album "Raditude."

The four song opening run of "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To"'s high energy stomp, "I'm Your Daddy"'s anthemic new wave, "The Girl Got Hot"'s beer chugging frat rock explosion, and "Can't Stop Partying"'s general wtf-ness is a fine, fine way to let this record barrel out of the gates. However, just as you think Weezer is running amok from corner to corner of the pop music spectrum, they bring in the All-American Rejects' songwriting talents to remind you that not even half a decade ago, they were filling up albums with (what many listeners could not see as anything more than) indistinguishable mid-tempo guitar rock songs. The track "Put Me Back Together" is actually quite good, sporting a chorus that brings to mind the AAR's stronger hits. But it's nevertheless a sign of things being steered back towards more normal territory. "Tripping Down The Freeway," for instance, is built upon the same "Keep Fishin'" recalling drumbeat as "The Girl Got Hot," while the placement of the hooky "Let It All Hang Out" next to the similar but comparatively hookless "In The Mall" finds the former being short-changed on the first few listens. On last year's Weezer, "Dreamin'" was an anomaly on the album for sounding so similar to their more "classic" big guitar pop stylings of the past, yet this handful of Raditude tracks only creates a tension between the group's newfound adventurousness and their default "signature sound." However, even a straightforward rocker like "In The Mall" manages to squeeze in an atmospheric feedback/synth/mall PA system/heavenly chiming guitar chord break, not to mention the heavily treated guitar solo that follows, one of multiple surprising lead guitar parts to pop up throughout the album.

The one song that's really bound to fuck with the listenership is "Love Is The Answer." Sadly, for a song that includes some wicked sitar, Indian woman guest vocals, and yet another balls out guitar solo, it doesn't exactly do a whole lot. Eastern new age cock rock built around mantra-like repetition? Maybe they should leave that one behind permanently. Still, most of these criticisms are stemming from speculation about Weezer's future. Whatever I said about the "Keep Fishin'" drumbeat... forget it. It was nitpicking. Each of this album's ten tracks is a wonderfully singular entity unto itself. While my own sensibilities drive me to hope that Weezer still has much further to sink into total pop insanity and that this album will turn out to be a minor step in an even more unexpected process of evolution for the group, as a snapshot of this process, Raditude is the kind of weirdly perfect half hour pop record that every mainstream pop/rock act should be striving to make. Leave it to Weezer to possess the right amounts of experience, ambition, and humility to know just where to aim.

Rating: 9.3/10 on the Pitchfork Media scale.

Download Link: Vampire Weekend - Contra [2010]... great record.

Yoko Ono - Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band

The missing piece of a highly cacophonous puzzle. Ever wonder why John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band necessitated that title or why he's on the cover with a woman who doesn't really do anything? The answers could very well be "Why not?" and "Because she followed him everywhere," but you're not about to get off that easy, no, sir!

The fact of the matter is that like John Lennon the human being, his first solo outing was not without a complement, a soulmate, a pretentious naked Asian female, and to John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, the similarly titled Yoko Ono/Plastic Band was conceived to be all of those things.

While the Plastic Ono Band could only be described as a loosely knit collective of whatever musicians were willing to put up with these "artists" at any given point in time, history will remember them for that month long period in 1970 (and a bit of time during '71, but that's another review altogether!) when the POB truly was one of the great minimalist noise rock powerhouses this side of the Velvet Underground. Who can deny Klaus Voormann's thumping basswork, Mandingo Starr's bare bones basic yet highly singular drumming style, and John Lennon channeling future child star Steve Albini with some of the filthiest angular guitar strangulations this side of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain? We're all familiar with the driving power of such propulsive bangers as "Well Well Well" and "I Found Out" and sometimes you have to wish Lennon would have followed these by then splendidly refined avant-garde impulses and hooked up with Can or Suicide or something instead of cranking out rockabilly covers and syrupy muzak for the rest of his solo career.

Luckily, it's not just his critically jizzed upon solo debut that features the 1970 era POB's primal raw doggin'. First, the cover. As we all know, John's album features him leaning back on Yoko, symbolizing that he is relaxed and content to release an album of self-absorbed whining laid over plodding cock rock grooves. The cover of Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, on the other hand, features Yoko sucking off John through a fiery portal to Hell located in the back of her head. Recorded during the same sessions as Lennon's album (I think?), the music on Yoko's record is a similarly stripped down, rackety interpretation of rock 'n roll. Rather than actual "songs," however, the tracks here are all born from an extended improv session where the drums and bass lay down any number of one chord grooves over which Yoko's caterwauling vocals and Lennon's manic slide guitar compete for dominant shrillness.

Yoko does a lot of crazy shit here... making her voice wobble like somebody is shaking her, squawking like a demented ostrich, and oftentimes combining these two approaches. Side two opener "AOS," recorded with Ornette Coleman's quartet, contains her most violently throat mangling screams, although the first half provides the listener with more subdued sounds that are much appreciated. The rest of the record's musical accompaniment is largely made up of the POB's rock based slide guitar heavy jamming, although "Touch Me" and "Paper Shoes" take things into spacier territory, emphasized by the echo used on the latter's vocal track. Neither Yoko or her backing musicians are as graceful as Linda Sharrock and husband Sonny's group on Black Woman, nor does she go to the extremes of Ono disciples such as Adris Hoyos (Harry Pussy) or Maja Ratkje, but perhaps the more primitive rock approach combined with an occasionally patience testing fetish for the Japanese hetai vocal style makes the combination of low art (?) and high art (??!!!) elements all the more effective. A fascinating work from a fascinating and misunderstood artist! Buy it and challenge yourself for once.

Rating: Good if you dig some free jazz bullshit.

Download Link: "Touch Me"... no thanks, Yoko! XD

The-Dream - Love vs. Money

Hey, it's 13 more good songs. The man himself says that Love vs. Money is "like the first album on crack," and I've never done crack, but if it means more synths, more lyrics about fucking, and more guest appearances by your famous friends Lil Jon, Mariah Carey, and Kayne West, the first rapper with a Benz and a backpack... well, fuck. Buy me some. Everything you liked about Love Hate has been amplified to widescreen technicolor proportions, guys. Too many classixx on that wonderfully flowing album length listening experience for this one to surpass it, but I'm more likely to cherrypick favorites from LvsM rather than plow all the way through from start to finish, which inevitably results in having to hear at least 80% of these tracks out of order no matter what. How many more total jams is this guy gonna be able to effortlessly pull out of his ass? He's a radio killa and an R&B guerilla, clearly. Album is just a bag of candy colored tricks. Epic multipart drama with those two title tracks, the soothing slow burner dot gif balladry of "Fancy," stuffing "Take You Home 2 My Mama" with hooks, hooks, hooks galore, closing everything out with a dumb song about girls' butts... every song has at least one good part and then usually a bunch of other ones. If you've been dismissing this one as an overrated product of hipster tokenism, maybe you're right. It's a fucking sick collection of songs, though. Album of the Year until Raditude drops.

Rating: 9.1/10

Download Link: Fenix TX - "Katie W."... great song that was in my Mediafire account.

LEAK OF THE CENTURY



Vampire Weekend - Contra

No review for this one! That's YOUR job! We now khow much you're anticipating this modern classic, so you be the critic. Write a brief review in our comments section and maybe one of our writers will offer you some constructive feedback. Happy listening!

Rating: You tell us!

Download Link: Vampire Weekend - Contra [2010]

antioch arrow - germs of masochism

this is a maelstrom of unapologetic sexuality and angst ridden ferocity

these kids play fast n loose
this is the new wave of androgyny and a poison kissoff to the rules

the cover turned me gay

inspirational verse: "love put a curse on me" this isnt just for kids anymore


RIYL: suede, jill sobule

31G 2003

Flux of Pink Indians - Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible

Back in my high school days I ran with many members of the "Chicago punk rock scene." They all liked this band a lot and some of them would flip out when I'd talk about Crass, like this shit is somehow superior in every way. Considering how likely most people are to have horrible taste in pretty much everything, it's not surprising that this particular group of people would prefer a band that is basically Crass minus everything that's interesting about that band. The anarchy is there and so are the goofy shouted British guy vocals, but nah, there's nothing memorable here. Sounds like any number of bands could crank out 50 albums of this stuff and have it all be of about equal quality. Although, if you're some hardcore punk guy whose tastes are determined by how innocuously music manages to fit into its given genre, then GET ON THIS!!!

Rating: Average.

Download Link: "Digital Love"... now here's some real shit that slays.

The-Dream - Love Hate

Before Terius Nash had become the indie rock web forum icon that most of the nation knows and loves him as, he released a little heard solo album that only a select few white people really flipped out over. But let me tell you, those folks had the right idea because this is one solid pop LP by one solid guy who makes good music. All the songs are dope as hell especially the singles but you only have to listen to everything after "Falsetto" a few times before it all stops completely running together. Even if you can't remember anything but the choruses from "Purple Kisses," "Playin' In Her Hair," and "Luv Songs," you can still get a kick out of the awesome production which has a lot of pianos (maybe?) and vocal layering and shit. Opener "Shawty Is Da Shit" is just downright heavenly like the first time you shroomed to Person Pitch. Of the main attractions here, "Fast Car" might be the most unrelentlessly hooky but the success with which The-Dream manages to pull off what is more or less a shameless update of "Little Red Corvette" is still ripe for immersing one's self in. And you gotta love how he seamlessly merges that certified banger with the foreboding drama of "Nikki" when you're not looking and doesn't even stop there because it's only setting the stage for the arms-stretched-towards-the-sky climax of "She Needs My Love." Side two has "Mama," which is pretty but pretty BORING, too. I like the Rihanna song. The weaksauce guitar solo in "Falsetto" sounds like shit but other than that this is a really good album.

Rating: 9.2/10

Download Link: "I Luv Your Girl"... you thought I wasn't gonna mention this one didn't you, haha. Just crank it.

City of Caterpillar - City of Caterpillar

Yo, doggs, it's the screamo post-rock revolution from seven years ago. Nine minute songs with some real Godspeed/Mogwai bullshit where they play pleasant quiet parts that are really easy to write if you play the guitar with your fingers and then enhance the drama of those parts with parts that are louder. This is real hardcore, though, so the production sounds like a shiny old asshole and the vocals have that great semi-retarded thing going for them that makes me never listen to the Heroin discography CD that I bought. These are multi-part epics that sound like someone dipped them in poop so even the quiet parts just blur together with the face pummeling anger stuff. Imagine a band as ridiculous and hilarious as Antioch Arrow or Angel Hair trying to play epic black metal and you'll be imagining music that is incredibly ugly and impossible to sit through, i.e. this album. I just find this kind of classic real deal emotion rock to be super fascinating because it's like a filthy incompetent version of actual music.

If you're a hot teen and know a lot of fagz who won't shut up about Explosions In The Sky you gotta sit them down with this authentic boogie rock LP by City Of Caterpillars, full of str8 bangers to lick puss to. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Rating: ?

Download Link: the first song

David Sylvian - Manafon

Not far into the second half of Christian Fennesz's 2004 full length solo release Venice, there's a song called "Transit" that might be the only truly startling moment on an album that sounds much like an artist playing to his strengths without bothering with too many surprises. The track is like any of the other works that make Venice into a sonically engaging yet unassumingly cohesive listening experience (not a bad thing), further displaying Fennesz's skill for combining the lovely with the soul draining via his trademark combination of electronics and processed guitar.

But there's one aspect of "Transit" that goes out of its way to be more memorable than whatever the fuck "The Point of It All," "City of Light," and "Circassian" may or may not have going for them: David Sylvian contributes a guest vocal performance. He has a pleasant enough voice, a sort of dystopian croon that is weathered and classy enough to fit the ultra-serious "modern-day ambient electroacoustic composer" vibe of Venice. There's some enjoyable multi-tracking here and there. The melody is about as interesting as one being shaped around a 1-2 chord drone piece can be... the lyrics, same. Something about asking you to follow him as he says goodbye to Europe. Sounds like he needed some lyrics and wrote them and sang them and that's just how things were gonna be. And why not, really. Good for him.

Do Sylvian's vocal contributions fit? One could say that they're simply too inoffensive not to. Which brings us to a more important question: Couldn't we have just done without these largely useless vocals that feel so arbitrarily tacked on and unnecessary? Why not sit Sylvian down in front of a laptop and have him spew forth some faux poetic bullshit via some spontaneous "too free and stream-of-consciousness to ever become interesting at all" melodies that are so disjointed you can barely even call the damn things "melodies" over Christian Fennesz's entire recorded output?

As evidenced by the few pieces of David Sylvian's post-Japan career that I've managed to come in contact with, he seems to have built up an identity as some kind of avant-garde hanger-on, forcing his boring as all fuck vocal stylings over perfectly decent slices of modern composition and improvisation that would be even more listenable were they to remain untouched. He did it on "Transit," he did it on Ryuichi Sakamoto's "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence," he probably does it all over the contributions of Derek Bailey and Christian Fennesz found on Blemish, and oh, boy, does he just go all out on Manafon, an album that you will probably see in the Wire's top 10 of 2009 and that happens to not be good at all.

Here's the premise: gather together a who's who of heavy-hitters from the history of electroacoustic improvisation, throw Evan Parker in there because he's a good dude who "gets it," record everybody fucking around, overdub some shitty on-the-spot and out-the-ass "improvised" vocal line because it's truer to the nature of the music that way, and hey, who's gonna be naive enough to try and create anything resembling a song out of this plinkety plonkety racket, anyway?

Big surprise that the result ends up being one gigantic snooze. Don't blame the musicians, though, who all tend to be fine when in other contexts and even turn out some choice moments throughout Manafon. No, the blame belongs squarely on Sylvian for thinking this was ever an idea worth pursuing. For constantly being the central focus of these improvisations, Sylvian's vocal talents appear to be more limited than a danged woodblock. The monotonous drone of a voice that he picks as his primary "instrument" for this potential super session is simply dull, dull, dull. There are vocalists in existence who are able to create forward thinking experimental music that straddles the lines between modern composition, avant-garde jazz, and assorted pop elements. However, Sylvian's voice is not ripe enough with the kind of heartbreaking depth that might have allowed Robert Wyatt, Mark Hollis, or Scott Walker to affectively carry this "material" (which would have been done so mainly by not bothering with it in the first place), and if he's capable of the kind of tonal/emotional range that Carla Bozulich and Nick Cave seem to have in spades, he doesn't even attempt to show it here. As a matter of fact, that voice manages to damage any positive view one could have of the potentially enjoyable instrumental performances, emphasizing all that is joyless and unrewardingly patience testing about EAI. This is made all the more tragic by the knowledge that over half a decade ago two of the performers here, Keith Rowe and John Tilbury, recorded the two hour long Duos For Doris, a mammoth work of devastating emotional resonance inspired by the death of Tilbury's mother, an album that was about three times as long as Manafon with roughly a seventh of the musicians yet somehow resulted in an album about ten times as powerful.

If I can't have the dry humor of Kevin Drumm to act as an anchor for my enjoyment of noise, there needs to be something there to latch onto. Something other than boring David Sylvian boringly shitting out pretentious babble that's just fucking boring, which like that Magic I.D. album last year is the kind of wholly empty bottom of the barrel chin stroking crap that only the most joyless IHMers and Erstwhile Records devotees imaginable could possibly see any value in.

Rating: Awful, awful shit.

Download Link: Vampire Weekend - "Horchata"

Akron/Family - Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free

When we last left our bearded heroes, they were in quite the pickle: coping with the loss of one of their leading members right as they were about to get into touring mode for their recently completed roots prog tour de force Love Is Simple. Did they panic and go into hiding, trying to make sense of what their future could possibly hold? Fuck no! Knowing that singer/guitarist Ryan Vanderhoof's absence would surely burrow a gaping hole into the live potential of their demanding new compositions, they instead called up four other hairy young men to ensure that every night spent onstage would be not just a concert, but a party that no one in attendance (or at least this reviewer) would ever forget.

Yet even through all the carefree smiles and fun, a sense of uncertainty loomed large over the touring ensemble's three core members. They'd managed to save their own asses this time, but where to once the party inevitably winds to a close and all the guests go home? Would they forge ahead, following whatever inspiration happens to materialize from their newfound situation, or would they let such a devastating blow shatter everything they'd built up over the past half decade?

Perhaps if the band wasn't so used to tearing up the rulebook every time it came time to pull together a new album length statement, the prospect of starting over may have been a tad more daunting. As much as many so-called fans might still secretly long for one, a rehash of the 2005 self-titled release would have been impossible due to how much they had already mined from such a fertile aesthetic. Perhaps if the album had been anything less than a masterpiece there would have been some room for refinement, more leftover ideas waiting to be uncovered and polished. But this was not the case then, and nor is it now. And so for the third time in a row (not counting an excellent half of a split LP and a "mini-album," jesus, this band!), they've dropped a jawdropping monstrosity out of nowhere, doing things that we previously had no idea they had in them.

Well... kind of. It depends on who you ask, really. To many listeners, "they're still drowning in a mess of unfinished ideas and grating hippy nonsense!" But let's put this one under the microscope and see if we can make it seem notable within the context of Akron/Family's long strange trip, if not that of modern independent rock music in general.

Determination, persistence, and creativity are essential qualities that a band must have when overcoming an obstacle as seemingly crippling as the loss of a crucial member. When life takes away a few of your lemons, you can still make lemonade... just not as much. Or it might just taste worse if you fuck up by not compensating with the amount of water. The human mind is not a lemon, though. When life takes away one of the guys who contributes ideas to your records, it's not taking away the ideas that you will have in the future and it's certainly not taking away the ideas that the situation created by the now former member's departure allows you to come up with and probably wouldn't have occurred to you if you hadn't thrust into that exact situation. Public Image Ltd. did it when bassist/essential component Jah Wobble left, saying, "Fuck bass, we're just going to experiment with percussion," turning out Flowers of Romance, a unique record in their catalog that is great for entirely different reasons than their earlier work with Wobble as a member. Likewise, when Jimmy McCulloch and Joe English left Wings, the core trio of Denny Laine, Linda McCartney, and the guy whose name everyone always forgets soldiered on to create London Town, their most focused and studio exploiting album length statement since the last time they found themselves pared down to the trio format.

While the title of the trio effort that ended up coming out of that "last time" declared the group to be a "Band On The Run," the things that the members of Wings were on the run from most certainly did not include "their ability to come up with spectacular songs." And I am happy to report that the same can be said of the new three piece edition of Akron/Family and its first officially released studio material. Like PiL and Wings before them, the three piece configuration of A/F finds the group exploring the possibilities of the studio environment in ways the A/F that was more set on "being a band" never got to.

From the homemade "kitchen sink aesthetic" approach that characterized their folky debut recording, to the extended group freakouts found on later releases, there has always been an emphasis on the organic, either through the ensemble dynamic or the more intimate "guy playing an acoustic and whispering" tracks that got them lumped in with many of the "freak folk" boom's heaviest (and most irritating) hitters (yet earned the group tragically less acclaim than any of them.) Of course, there were a number of curious sonic embellishments found throughout that first record, and the analogue recording triumph that is Andrew Weiss's production job on Love Is Simple is essentially a more meticulously tinkered with reimagining of the kind of raw overdubless full band showoffery found on their side of Split LP.

Simply put, they now sound bigger than ever. Bigger than three men should be able to sound. While the group has moved beyond songwriting as a vehicle for showcasing its splendid handle on group interaction, the jams remain. When the nearly eight minute "Gravelly Mountains Of The Moon" decides to just collapse into a chaotic mess of freeform noise before breaking off into a distantly recorded group vocal mantra complete with clapping and wailing saxophone sirens, taking the groove higher and higher, and then right at the peak bringing the listener down for a brief final section that is only vocals and piano... well, you get the sense that if this band's naysayers were ever right to call them "indulgent," hearing them more committed to piling sound upon sound over their multipart epics than ever could possibly justify such criticisms.

That noisy abandon is noisier and more a product of studio experimentation than ever before. In some places, it works remarkably well, like in the heavens parting interlude in "Sun Will Shine (Warmth of The Sunship Version)," which is just such a mind-huggingly lovely wash of ambient noise that you'd think you were listening to Tim Hecker or Fennesz or some crap. In other places, like on the tossed off "MBF," the "throwing shit at a wall" approach can feel a bit tedious. Obviously one can't say no to the A+ Steve Howe riffing in the song's opening, but shortly it turns into the guys seeing how much obnoxious noise they can make with a synthesizer while the drummer bangs out some ploddingly guttural floor tom heavy pattern. Before you know it, they're trying on some punishing noise for size, complete with tortured "David Yow at 1:06 in 'Monkey Trick'" screaming.

Brutal? A little bit, I suppose. As is, it just doesn't sound seamlessly integrated into their sound or refreshing due to placement within some unexpected context. The sense that they're only halfway towards reaching whatever it is they're going for isn't just present in the noisefuck explosions, however. "River," "Creatures," and "Many Ghosts" find the group crafting songs that resemble straightforward indie pop more than anything else in their catalog, and not even in the "Yes trying to play a Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 medley" way that made "I've Got Some Friends" such a strangely satisfying would-be hit single in an alternate universe. These songs don't jerk back and forth between sections, but instead stick with rhythms that feel less like any kind of classic rock throwback and more like something groovier and more eclectic. The crawling neo-dub 311 style beatz on "Creatures" were previously relegated to throwaway interludes like the one that closes out "Ed Is Portal," but here it gets a whole song. Sporting a distorted keyboard line and some tasteful horn overdubs, the song contains multiple vocal melodies that are handled with varying degrees of success. The honest attempts at writing pop melodies in this song and "River" feel underwhelmingly simplistic if not just plain lazy, displaying a sing-songiness that is more suited to children's music than the kind of well-crafted potential singles that I might feel like listening to ever. "Many Ghosts" comes closest with its enjoyable minor key melody that climaxes multiple glorious times when the song breaks for some twinklingly sighing harmonies.

The more "produced like a rock album" approach to recording its music that Akron/Family takes on Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free suits these kinds of songs well, however flawed they may be. It displays an evolution in sound and approach that I would not have predicted but that I am eager to see unfold. They still sound most at home on the two back to back country-tinged folk numbers, "Set 'Em Free" and "The Alps & Their Orange Evergreen," which ironically seem to be jammed most awkwardly into the album's more in-the-red than usual production. Elsewhere, the new sound works more naturally with the compositions, like on the galloping opener "Everyone Is Guilty." There the newfound sonic qualities help the neck leaping angular guitar licks achieve an extra thorny quality, doing wonders to enhance a groove that already sounds like Remain In Light remixed by vikings. If the new edition of Akron/Family is capable of moments like this as well as many of the equally successful or even the not all that successful ideas scattered throughout this LP's exhilaratingly schizophrenic 49 minutes, I can say at least one thing about Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free that I've said about every single thing this band was released: as much as this music excites me, I'm even more excited to imagine where they could possibly go next.

Rating: As we approach the end of the decade and look back at how critical opinion has determined many of our favorite (or not so favorite) bands' legacies, I can't help but feel that the underrating of Akron/Family has been one of the consensus's greatest oversights in recent years. To be a fan of this group is to be treated to consistency and a refusal to repeat itself. There are honestly very few indie rock bands these days that please me on the levels that A/F do. A wide array of classic influences and an acute understanding of what elements to pull from them, remarkable tightness as an ensemble that makes listening to their recordings just as stimulating as witnessing them live, perfect ability to utilize their avant-garde ambitions in a way that only enhances their forward thinking songcraft... the only group that even comes close for me is Deerhoof. Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free wasn't "the album that finally broke them," but why shouldn't it have been? It's singular enough within their catalog that one could easily argue that it blows away everything else they've done. They can appropriate African rhythms like the Dirty Projectors, spew out obnoxious rackety bullshit like Animal Collective, and probably do whatever the hell Grizzly Bear does. Is it because they smile too much? Is the noise-making a little too genuine? Is everybody just done with beards? Kind of a shame, really, because this is art rock that isn't afraid of anything, that could give half a fuck about embarrassing itself. Maybe it's really just terrible, but I haven't listened to any new music more this year, although The-Dream, DJ Quik & Kurupt, and Neil Young's album about his car come close.

Fuck everything that's not The Beatles.

Download Link: "Many Ghosts"... a fine little interestingly produced pop song. Not much else on the album sounds like it, though. Whatever.