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: