The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

I've never heard this album all the way through, so let's get down to it and see what I've been missing, shall we?

1. "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" - As if this two-hour epic wasn't imposing enough as it is -- six charting hits, millions of copies sold, all inside a jumbo-size 2xCD case almost too big to fit in the little cubby hole beneath my car's CD player -- this beast of an album opens with an instrumental prelude, the calm before the storm, if you will. Brace yourselves, this stirring overture orders. It's going to be a bumpy ride!

2. "Tonight, Tonight" -- I've been back and forth on this song for years. I always enjoyed The Smashing Pumpkins most when they played feedback-drenched freakouts like "Rhinoceros," "Cherub Rock," or "Frail and Bedazzled." Being the American answer to My Bloody Valentine, Ride, or Chapterhouse would never have made them MTV superstars but up until this point it was almost possible to believe that they could actually have it both ways. The stirring strings of the CSO quickly closed the door on those hopes, and the high-concept award-winning video put to bed the days of blurry and layered Creation-flavoured clips. I know it's the second track on the album, but you might as well consider it the opener, and as such it does a fine job of shitting down the throats of everyone who thought they knew what to expect from "Da Pumpkuns," as they were fondly called all across Chicagoland. Great song. I used to cringe at its earnestness whenever it would come on the radio but in the context of the album it might make sense. That's something that kids in the post-CD age will never understand!

I put this on in the car and my girlfriend said it sounded like "Final Fantasy music." Like a theme for some scene with an airship taking off. Pretty much OTM.

3. "Jellybelly" -- That summer you and your friends first got cars, the last day of school, that first hour after you walked down the halls and out the doors, piling in the backseat and driving off towards... did it really matter where? Memories...

4. "Zero" -- I've heard this song hundreds of times but never realized how short it really was. Say whatever you will about this band writing pompous, bloated songs, but this gets right down to business and doesn't waste a bar. I should be sick of this overplayed hit by now but instead its revealing itself as one of the juiciest cuts of modern rock the 90s had to offer, a song I'm perfectly content to forever associate with my formative years. I was pretty comfortable with this realization and I feel it's the first of many passages into old age to come.

5. "Here is No Why" -- I guess this is okay. Definitely a Smashing Pumkpins song. Some of these lyrics are definitely suspect and I wonder how well I'm going to last down the stretch if there's more of this to come, which there certainly will be. This is coming from someone who owns almost the whole Placebo catalog, btw. You heard me right. Got any poppers? No? Anyway, kind of an MBV-ripoff of a song title but it's too bad that's all they seemed to be stealing from them at this point in their career. Some days I really love this song. Others it gives me a terrific headache. Who knows why?

6. "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" -- The lead single from the album and one of the most unflinchingly fiece documents of adolescent angst ever cut to tape. "What do I get for my pain?" Billy Corgan asks us. Nearly a decade and a half later and our generation still doesn't have an answer!

7. "To Forgive" -- I really dig this. Laid-back, mellow, MC&tIS's slow burner if there ever was one. This should have been a summer album and this should have been the soundtrack for kids with nothing to do and nowhere to go and 90-degree afternoons. Too bad the album dropped one week before Halloween, 1995. Fitting for the Pumpkins, you say with a smile? Not when you had Gish and Siamese Dream coming out in May and July and would find Adore hitting the streets in June. What could be even more fitting? Billy walking ontstage at a Tinted Windows concert with an acoustic guitar in hand, taking to Taylor Hansen's microphone (too stunned by his boyhood idol's sudden appearance to make a move) and singing an unaccompanied rendition of this song, changing the lyrics to "I forget to forget, you are what's important" as he sets his (everlasting) gaze on James's surprised and clearly touched face. Their future embrace is just the beginning of one comeback that the world never expected.

8. "An Ode To No One" -- Some websites list this song as "Fuck You (An Ode to No One)" but either that's incorrect or my copy is the special Family Edition of the album. Anyway, this song is a real "Fuck You" to the listener! You always hear millennial nu-metal bands getting the bulk of the blame for trends in over-compression of rock music, but maybe you need to go back a few years beyond that to get to the roots of the modern "loudness war". I always enjoyed the angsty catharsis of the average Smashing Pumpkins song, especially after a run of Matchbox 20/Counting Crows/Dave Matthews Band songs on the radio, but this is a little too much. What a mess this song is, and at 5 minutes it's a pretty exhausting experience. But hey, if it's too loud then you're too old! Right?

9. "Love" -- I was really hoping for a break from the last song's racket but this is more of the same, except with handclaps. Billy's not as angry this time but all the instruments are mixed into a horrible clusterfuck a la Gravity Kills/Stabbing Westward. They got this sound right on "Pug" a few years later, but was it too late? Anyway, they probably could have left this song on the shelves and released a great single-length LP (I'm hardly the first person to have considered this). And then people hearing these new b-sides would say, "If that's what they cut out, what they left in must be pure gold!"

10. "Cupid de Locke" -- Now this is what I was hoping for, a gentle return to their shoegaze-y roots. Something about this still isn't right. Why do they have to record the bass so loud? Arrrg! Maybe there's a few alternate versions in the archives just waiting to see the light, I know the real fans have been clamoring for them for years.

11. "Galapogos" -- This is really lovely. Or at least I thought so when I first started to write this entry a few weeks ago. I don't remember what it sounds like now. What I do know is that after Mellon Collie was released, Dave Pajo was on the other side of town helping to put the finishing touches on a Tortoise track of the same name, but secretly longing to finally rock out in ways his bandmates would never allow. Maybe he heard this album and knew he'd found his calling at last? Six years later, he'd finally get his wish. But wishes are a funny thing. Sometimes you get what you asked for, but it's never quite what you expect!

12. "Muzzle" -- The single that everyone forgets about, but the secret weapon of side one? They probably could have wrapped up the album after this, but wait, there's more than an hour's worth of music to come! Corgan's lyrics never got more personal than this, so if you loved Blinking With Fists then this song is definitely worth another look, especially if you want to know the real B.C.

13. "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans" -- I love the creamy intro of this song, which got my hopes up that it might be all-instrumental. No such luck, but it's not a total loss. I wanted to write about how great it was of Billy to write a tribute to Selena, slain by one of her fans during MC&tIS's recording sessions in the spring of 1995. A quick Google search reveals I'm not the only person to point this out, turning my clever discovery into a running joke.

14. "Take Me Down" -- I used to hear "Be Strong Now" every day when I worked at Kohl's in high school. This was always one the highlight of my day, after which it was all downhill as I swept floors, collected used plastic hangers from registers, and carted out boxes of unassembled particleboard furniture to customers. So, yeah. I'm a big James Iha fan. A nice come down to the end of side one. Here's where I hope for even more Iha songs on side two, all the while knowing that's less likely than a Corgan duet with Stephen Malkmus.

15. "Where Boys Fear to Tread" -- Another instrumental song might get disc two off to a good start, and for the first minute it sounds like that's what we're gonna get. But like Prince Herbert, Billy just can't help himself.

16. "Bodies" –- Whoa, who put a Deftones song on here?

17. "Thirty-Three" –- Not a big fan of this song. What else is there to say, really?

18. "In the Arms of Sleep" -– Woah, who put a Calexico song on here?

19. "1979" -– I have a copy of the single for this in my closet. It belonged to my brother and was one of the only CDs he owned in the '90s that wasn't a bass CD, film soundtrack or some kind of Cash Money / No Limit gangsta rap album. I stole his Westside Connections CD and sold it for cash at the used store in 1998. I later found this in our parents' basement before they moved. I pinched from his collection from years at my own discretion but this was in retaliation for the years of unpunished thievery he committed against me as we grew up. Following our grandmother's death, I took the last pack of cigarettes from her purse, intending to one day ceremonially smoke them as a tribute to her legacy. I kept them in my desk drawer for a matter of mere days before they went missing, surely wasted on him and his white trash friends as they listened to Master P or The Offspring in the back of someone's car. But therein lies the irony: "1979" was an homage to teenage hedonism, so idyllically portrayed in the iconic video, and who else lived that life more naturally and completely than my brother? Once again, it looks like the joke's on me. Shit!

20. "Tales of a Scorched Earth" –- This is just awful. Really losing my will to review the rest of this album. Are there people who listen to this all the way through? Here's where I usually get off, and I think that's what I'm gonna do now.

"Through the Eyes of Ruby" is nice enough, and I'm a sucker for album-closing lullabies like "Farewell and Goodnight," but otherwise... what else can you say about this album? Wait for the 15th anniversary reissue next year and the critical reassessment of its place in the canon, sure to be a fiery discussion if there ever was one.

Rating: It's 1995 (the girls are just friends).


Download: "Myxomatosis" (live)

Robert Palmer - Pressure Drop

And so we conclude our three day long stretch of Robert Palmer reviews with this 1975 effort. Five years before the blockbuster hard rock of Riptide, Palmer was laying down the quirky yet awfully suave new wave of Clues, and now going back five years before that album brings us to Pressure Drop... and there's nary a synthesizer to be found.

Thought you were finished dealing with Hall & Oates namedrops popping up in Robert Palmer album reviews? Think again! Palmer spends a decent chunk of this album not far from the kind of Philly soul worshiping white person R&B that most certainly was Daryl and John's bag at the time. After all, this was the year of what many refer to as The Silver Album, the fourth H&O full length that steered them away from their fortunately brief hard rock fling and back towards groovier pastures. During the first two seconds of "Back In My Arms" (of which Palmer isn't asking how that feels, HINT, HINT), we are already confronted with three electric piano notes and a wonderfully syrupy string section that makes one wonder why Palmer wasn't ever granted a guest appearance on Yacht Rock. By the time the chorus hits, you'd swear that this was a great lost Abandoned Luncheonette reject.

Of course, one mustn't neglect the album's title... not just an homage to the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack, but an indicator of where Palmer's musical head was at the time, aside from living up to the classy expectations built up by the album cover. There is a title track here and it is a cover of the Toots & The Maytals classic, a reggae classic that Palmer simply wails on! The surprisingly competent handling of non-white musical stylings doesn't stop there, however. Songs like "Work To Make It Work," "Trouble," and "Fine Time" possess an impressively genuine funkiness that was likely aided considerably by the presence of Little Feat as the backing band for this album. Why didn't Daryl and John think of that one???!

In 1975, Robert Palmer wore dopeass suits and could be treated to the sight of a woman's ass were he to glance over his shoulder at any given moment in time, especially the one captured on this album cover. With enough grasp on melody to make his poppier numbers irresistible and an ability to make his attempts at grittier, funkier soul sounds come across as not totally pussyish... well, he was good at music, I guess. Maybe you can find this shit on vinyl in a dollar bin somewhere. Probably a heck of a lot more exciting than Tarkus or Grand Funk Railroad.

Rating: RIP

Download Link: "Back In My Arms"... song is sunroof top, diggin' the scene. And you will be, too.

Robert Palmer - Clues

When Robert Palmer suffered a fatal heart attack in September of the year 2003, pop music critics Jim Derogatis and Greg Kot from Sound Opinions, The World's Only Rock 'n Roll Talk Show, were there to give Palmer his due as a man whose work contained more true artistic merit than much of his audience has ever been aware of.

Exhibit A: "Johnny & Mary," a tragic tale of tattered romance set to a driving drum beat and an occasionally minimalist synth arrangement. Oh, the such great heights that this slice of catchy new wave pop manages to soar to. It's no wonder that those pied pipers Placebo were inspired to initiate a full-scale reevaluation of Palmer's entire recorded output. Guess you missed the boat by a few months, Jim and Greg. Thanks for playing!

Palmer doesn't exactly spend the rest of Clues wildly shitting out his very own McCartney II, but there are nevertheless a number of surprises that make this a more eclectic and subversive listen than one might expect. Witness opener "Looking For Clues," where a herky jerky keyboard/muted guitar/something riff provides the basis for an upbeat soul pop number full of octave vocal doublings and 4 second staccato synth jab breaks. In fact, you'd swear it was... something off of McCartney II. If it didn't sound like a finished song made by a relatively stable human being, I mean. Chris Frantz is credited with "bass drum."

Elsewhere you have Gary Numan guesting on a cover of his own song, a radio ready rendition of the Beatles' "Not A Second Time" with a ridiculous synth solo in the middle, and several originals that are just fine, really. A stylistically dynamic 31 minutes. Idiosyncratic production all around, plus the joy of hearing a soulful pop craftsman launching this usually pretty dorky Devo/Kraftwerk/Squeeze pussy music into slightly unexpected territory.

Rating: It's no Voices. Still, another really, really enjoyable album from Robert Palmer.

Download Link: "Looking For Clues"... can you imagine somebody in 1980 throwing this shit on after Dirty Mind? Kind of?

Robert Palmer - Riptide

BERNARD EDWARDS TAKIN' SHIT TO THE NEXT LEVEL AS EXPECTED

ROB LOOKS LIKE A SQUARE BUT THESE ARE SOME TIGHT GROOVES

PERFECTLY SATISFYING 35 MINUTE LISTENING EXPERIENCE TO BUILD AROUND THE ALREADY FAMILIAR "ADDICTED TO LOVE"

"HYPERACTIVE" IS HALL & OATES ALBUM TRACK WORTHY, NOT QUITE DRY ENOUGH TO BE ROBOTICALLY FUNKY IN THAT NEW WAVVES WAY BUT STILL SOME SOLID SOUL POP AND THE PERFECT LOST '80S CLASSIC TO ORDER TAKEOUT TO WHILE CELEBRATING YOUR VICTORY ON A VH1 GAME SHOW

DISTORTED GUITARS KEEP THESE FUNKY R&B ROOTED PARTY JAMS SQUARELY IN BLARING ROCK TERRITORY

LISTEN TO THAT DISSONANT INSANITY ON "FLESH WOUND," IT'S LIKE THE ROBERT FRIPP PRODUCED DARYL HALL SOLO ALBUM OR AALIYAH'S "WHAT IF" THAT GETS CALLED "AN R&B KING CRIMSON" IN HER S/T'S WIKIPEDIA ENTRY

"DISCIPLINE OF LOVE" WHAT A BANGER TO GET EVERYBODY WORKED UP AND THEN PULL EVERYTHING BACK DOWN WITH A BRIEF COMEDOWN THAT REPRISES THE TITLE TRACK BUT NEVERTHELESS, I CAN'T SAY THAT ANY OF THESE 35 MINUTES ARE PARTICULARLY WASTED

ENOUGH VARIATION THROUGHOUT A PERFECTLY BEARABLE RUNNING TIME, NOT A MISSTEP TO BE FOUND, PALMER'S ENERGY NEVER LETS UP... GONNA GO RIGHT AHEAD AND DECLARE THIS TO BE A SOLID LONG PLAYER

Rating: It's gonna give you a really, really good time. Who's gonna say no to that?

Download Link: "Hyperactive"

Pajo - Scream With Me

Former Zwan member records a full length album of unplugged Misfits covers. And that's it. Always slow, always gentle acoustic fingerpicking, always vocals done in a near whisper. Over in 25 minutes. A no bullshit description of a no bullshit recording.

Because we're dealing with the songbook of what is surely one of the ten or so greatest pop/rock oriented acts of all time, of course these melodies are going to be a bit of a challenge to sabotage completely. Even when clouded in a stubbornly consistent mood that remains unshakable throughout the album's duration, the timeless brilliance of "Hybrid Moments," "Teenagers From Mars," and "Where Eagles Dare" never ceases to shine through in all its aurally pornographic glory.

The "substance" part of the equation is so strong that it keeps Pajo from wandering too far up the ass of the "style" part, to the point where there's just nothing bad a person can really say about a release like this. Certainly the arrangements found in these interpretations could not be much more radically different sounding when compared with their source material, yet how likely would it be for a full-on compositional reconstruction of these songs to not suck ass? There's no need for Pajo to go all Mark Kozelek on us here. Scream With Me is a celebration of the Misfits' knack for tunefulness, for which the group's original lineup remains the finest in the whole pop-punk business. To alter that aspect of the songs would be eschewing their most noteworthy attributes.

Yes, "a no bullshit recording," indeed. Straightforwardness is key here. In his fingerpicking patterns, Pajo is going for something a tad more unassuming than Bert Jansch or the aforementioned Mark Kozelek. Arranged and laid down to tape on a whim? Perhaps. But lovingly so. That "alone in a bedroom with a 4 track at 3 A.M. trying not to wake the neighbors" vibe is in full swing, tape hiss and all. This shit is so scaled down that it makes Weed Forestin sound like Sandinista!, so surprisingly infectious once you get past the crude presentation that it makes Blue Corpse sound like White Box Requiem, and so refusing to show any musical variation whatsoever that it makes White Box Requiem sound like Blue Corpse.

Every song selected is a classic of the highest order, no question there. More than half the tracks are A+ highlights pulled from the undeniable Static Age release, after all. However, is a little something from Earth A.D. too much to ask? Not saying that this should be any longer or that I personally feel the need to replace any one of these perfectly acceptable cover versions, but could he have at least thrown in that album's poppiest, most coverable (in this context) track? "Bloodfeast"? The str8est of str8 bangers?

Guess I'll hold out for the outtakes EP. Maybe we'll be treated to some Famous Monsters jams (just kidding, man, what a crazy thing to say but I said it anyway.)

Rating: Very, very enjoyable. IMHO.

Download Link: "Hybrid Moments"... I lied, there are some slight yet fairly obvious melodic alterations made here. He's such a cutie, though.

The Grateful Dead - American Beauty

Wrapping up our final day of painting my brother's apartment, my dad finally took some initiative in selecting what music we would be enjoying as we touched up door frames and vacuumed blinds. Rather than apathetically settle for the hideously mediocre 2007 Steve Earle album that happened to be in the CD player (which I endured twice this past week, let me tell you) or have to sit through my picks from the iTunes library (Alice Cooper - Killer, Nilsson Schmilsson, disc one of Nuggets, Rumours for the umpteenth time, multiple Steely Dan recordings), the man took some initiative and selected some old dad favorites from the plentiful CD shelf.

First up was Blood On The Tracks by Boobs Dylan, an album that my dad owns an LP copy of and is unlistenable dreck of the lowest order. Next in the queue was the Grateful Dead's American Beauty. The same CD issue of the album that he has owned for the past 15 years, at that. So I suppose that adds an extra layer to the sense of familiarity.

Let me tell you about the Grateful Dead. They are an easy to dismiss musical group. I'm not going to go on and on about just why so many discerning music listeners feel that committing themselves to the cult and oeuvre of the Dead is not a task worth pursuing. I will say, however, that a major reason for said dismissal is the jams and the very idea that anyone could ever give a shit about singling out which one of fifty live versions of "Dark Star" truly takes the cake. Especially when the jams aren't even much to write home about, anyway. They don't possess the fluid elegance demanded by the most engaging jazz music. They're not heavy. They're not noisy. They're not "hypnotic." The grooves... fuck 'em. Listen to Miles Davis or Crazy Horse or microhouse or something. Not this mindlessly meandering b.s.!

But, oh, I love the jams. I understand the Dead's motivations there. Give me a guitar and I'll just go, go, go with some endless modal one-chord faux jazz crap soloing. It's a blast. You can't blame Jerbear & Friends for constructing a musical empire that allows them to step out in public and effortlessly dick around for hours... hell, years, really. And the survivors are still going at it while their dipshit fans are still too stoned to realize how boring it all is.

Regardless of how much investment I truly have in the opinions expressed thus far (I enjoy the Live/Dead recording and a Dick's Picks release or two, no lies), they at least give you some idea of the sort of vitriol that gets commonly spewed at this band and everything they've ever stood for. And so we set out to find a release of theirs that challenges our preconceptions, perhaps an album that captures the Dead focusing their songwriting in such a way that their compositional skills don't get lost in a web of the very most unbearable "experimental tendencies"?

American Beauty is not that album.

"Friend of The Devil," "Sugar Magnolia," "Truckin'"... these are the radio classics. And they've earned that reputation by being catchy little devils. The rest? Not so much. You see, the thing about the Dead is that the playing just isn't particularly interesting or anything more than the most by-numbers folk rock. The other thing is that aside from Jerry Garcia's feel good vocal tones, they were all terrible fucking singers with the ugliest of voices (play Music From Big Pink and then follow that up with anything Bob Weir ever sang... embarrassing, to say the least.) They can't harmonize with the folky grace of Crosby, Stills & Nash, nor do they have the humility or pop ambitions to overcome their own incompetence like the Guess Who did. The other thing is that Seb Hunter's rambling overly "poetic" lyrics sound particularly awkward being forced out of the mouths of these awful singers (including the somewhat not awful Jerry himself) and into their coma inducing shit songs. Which brings me to the inarguable fact that their songs pretty much suck. The opening lines of "Box of Rain" feel classic, sure, but the rest of the song goes nowhere and does nothing while going there. "Brokedown Palace" sounds like Wilco at their very worst. "Attics of My Life." So much slow garbage here. These songs are four, five, six minutes long. No excuse for that at all!

I started this review 24 hours ago and blew a whole day putting off finishing it. I have a headache that's lasted since late afternoon and really just need to go to sleep. I don't care about this album or "exposing the Dead's bullshit once and for all!" and wish I hadn't written so many paragraphs before getting to that last one where I ended up not really having much to say. This music is boring and this band, even when the songs are somewhat decent, always manages to fuck up at least one crucial aspect that reminds you that they were really just a miserable travesty all along. And not a very entertaining one. Not on this album, anyway.

Rating: Average.

Download Link:

Vile Gash - Demo II

The moon is full! The hounds are loose and their gash radars are in full swing! Sweaty, drippy, smelly, steamy, sloppy, vile gash. That, my friends, is what we are going to be sniffing out until the sun peeks out its adorable yellow head to welcome in another day of shattered dreams and broken hearts.

But nah, I'm kidding myself here. Not gonna be getting between a woman's legs tonight... no, sir. Sometimes you have to settle for what's in front of you. Sometimes it's not a "warm platinum pussy with a dynamic pussy hole," as Ghostface described it all those years ago. Sometimes vile gash goes all capital letters on us and arrives in the form of a cassette tape full of noisy hardcore punk music. And sometimes you don't even get a cassette tape... you just download the mp3s off some blog.

And thus we have this review. Vile Gash's second demo release showcases the Columbus, Ohio hitmakers realization that cassette technology allows for more than two minutes of music to be contained in one place. As with the group's debut release Demo, Demo II contains three brief blasts of the very most brutal hardcore. Negative Approach? Charles Bronson? D.R.I.? Whatever the fuck! Vile Gash likes it fast, ugly, and noisy. It's those layers of excess grime that elevate the experience of listening to Vile Gash's music above and beyond that of a more straightforward Discharge worshiping hardcore act such as Waco Fuck. The guitar/bass combination is pure slop with plenty of nasty low-end, the drums are a racket to behold, and the vocals, while certainly providing that classic "guy screaming" feel that you know and love, absolutely shred the speakers with their mangled throat ejaculations.

The fourth track, however, sounds like the time I tried getting my faux post-hardcore band to sound like Flipper by playing two chords really slow at the end of one of our songs for five minutes. Except in Vile Gash's hands, such an extended jam is handled with confidence and zero fear of getting their toes wet in some good filthy noise. If this isn't obscenely far-reaching musical growth, than I don't know what is. We're on the second release and already the palette has been expanded to include sluggish dirges that surpass the one minute mark? A good six times, at that? Well.

To hear a band like this striving towards total abrasiveness is a welcome development, indeed. Probably the only way I'm gonna be kept from saying, "Why am I listening to this when there's not a single thing here that isn't provided more competently by the classix???" They're too darn OI! OI! PUNK ROCK! DOOPCHKDOOPCHKDOOPCHK to go all Harry Pussy or even Drunkdriver on you. But that's just an option anyone needs in their musical life and I'm certainly thankful. However, looking at that faggy minimalist cover art, who knows what kind of free jazz bullshit Vile Gash is gonna unleash upon us next time around? I'll be here holding out for the Upper West Side Soweto requiem mass.

Rating: Best New Music! What are you gonna do, listen to anything for more than nine minutes at a time? Get fucked.

Download Link: "Scum"... 32 seconds of maximum rock fury!

R.E.M. - Chronic Town

I hope a "chronic town" actually exists so that I can go there and do massive bong rips all day, every day!!!

Pretty good EP. Everything about the first song is great. The next one is still pretty catchy. Track three, a bit better. Next one, whatever, it's good. Digging the last track and its crazy sound effects. Must be pretty solid, huh!

This band really didn't get much better than this 20 minutes of perfectly competent yet just subversive enough jingle jangle college music. When the Feelies are too artsy and Mission of Burma too brash for your tastes, try some R.E.M. on for size! It's really not all that difficult to imagine these songs playing on the local popular music radio station. These pasty bedwetters have their hearts in the pop song format and aren't intent on wasting your time with winding krautrock workouts or ugly noise assaults. No bullshit! Just tunes. And a soft wet pussy to slide them into.

Rating: Buy it! Burn it! Trash it!

Download Link: "Wolves, Lower"

Eat Skull - Wild & Inside

This band sucks and so does this album. Just imagine being someone who restricts his or her self to "NOTHIN' BUT THE RAWEST, NOISIEST SHIT" and having to live every day with the discomforting knowledge that you honestly think this is some of the best music being made today. Sure, the melodies are clearer this time around and things are a bit more dynamic and balanced between noisy shriekouts and way mellowed slow burners, but really, this is just more of the sort of monotonous lo-fi crap that has spread like HIV throughout the underground during the past couple years. The more rackety explosions here just make me wish I were listening to one of the 7-8 decent Times New Viking songs, which isn't even something I find myself ever wanting to do at this juncture in time. The gentlemen in this group who perform with the Hospitals should just stick to the project whose intentions are based in more abstract sonic meltdowns (which kind of blow, to be honest) because coming up with anything resembling a memorable vocal melody is completely out of Eat Skull's reach. And that's what they're trying to do, right? You can here the 3-4 note pop song desperately attempting to peer through the scrapey noise. But there's nothing to uncover, nothing that can reveal itself and prove anyone wrong, no mood that can envelop the listener... certainly nothing worth sitting through 27 minutes of. What a bunch of lazy garbage. Not even a case of "all style and no substance," but rather the substance meter is tragically keeling over into the negative region, as if to make a mockery of any music that possesses even a single shred of remarkableness. As of late, I have had more big 'ol DIY dumps taken in my mouth than I can count and frankly, I am not going to stand for any more.

Rating: Not favorable.

Download Link: Sugar Ray - "Rivers"