album review: 'the truth about love' by pink

You know, as angry as I got at Chris Brown - and believe me, after listening to every single fucking song on Fortune, I was plenty pissed off - I don't think there was a true 'edge' to that anger.

I won't deny that it's genuine - I loathe the misogynistic spurt of discharge, and every single one of his fans enabling his idiocy ought to be ashamed of themselves - but frankly, I was going into that album prepared for the worst. I expected Fortune to be garbage, and I wasn't disappointed. Now, some people - you know who you are - might say that my opinion was 'biased' going into that review, and that somehow partially invalidates that review because I wasn't being 'fair'. But this argument doesn't stand up based upon some very basic facts - namely because I was willing to give the goddamn album a chance and review it with some degree of intellectual perspective. I didn't just come here and rage incoherently - I actually took the time to try and find any possible shred of goodness in that album. The problem was, well, there wasn't any. 

But really, that sort of anger isn't really potent. As much as I hate Chris Brown and his music, I can't get truly enraged about it on an artistic level. Sure, Fortune is a massive turd, but it's not like I expected anything better from him. I wasn't expecting him to come forward and deliver some grand magnum opus on the scale of Frank Ocean's channel ORANGE (which I did not review, but I still highly recommend you check out - it's one of the best goddamn albums of the year). And I think I have the capacity to be fair to acts that I'm predisposed not to like - hell, I'm willing to acknowledge that the bonus track from Justin Bieber's Believe, 'Maria', is one of the best pop songs of the year. No, I'm not kidding - it may be working from Michael Jackson's 'Billie Jean' formula, but it nails it.

No, when I really get angry about music, it's about artists or acts that disappoint me. Acts that I know are so much better and yet produce shit that I can't, in good conscience, excuse. Take Eminem, for instance - he's one of my favourite rappers of all time, and I will still place 'Lose It' as the worst song from Billboard's year end charts in 2004 - because it's a skin-crawlingly awful song from a man capable of so much better. In a similar way, I'll rank 'Crack A Bottle', a mind-numblingly disappointing mess of a track from 2009 as the worst song from the year end charts of 2009 - yes, even worse than Beyonce's 'Diva' - because it's coming from three artists (well, two really, I have no love for 50 Cent) who are capable of so much more.

And on the topic of Eminem and disappointments, let's talk about Pink.

album review: 'uno!' by green day

I was afraid of this happening.

I mean, when I heard that Green Day was planning on putting out a trilogy of albums - and planning on doing so all within about six months of each other, my immediate reaction was disbelief. They would have that much material that was ready for prime-time? They would be able to construct three whole albums based upon material recorded over about five months? They would have enough things to say to last three entire albums?

And then I realized, with a feeling of crushing dread filling up my stomach, that they wouldn't - they couldn't. As much as I like Green Day - and I do, let's make no mistake about that (favourite album is Kerplunk, followed by 21st Century Breakdown and Dookie) - I knew instinctively that unless they were trying to write to a specific concept, they weren't going to be able to keep everything good. They couldn't stretch it out that far. Even though they divided each of the trilogy into musical themes (the first being power pop/punk, the second being garage rock, the third being stadium rock), I knew that they couldn't have enough great, unique material to span three albums. 

And I'm disappointed to say that my original suspicions were correct. Even worse, I don't think I went far enough - as of right now, Uno! is Green Day's worst album. 

Yeah, worse than Warning. I went there.

album review: 'the brilliancy (two song demo)' by the brilliancy AND live set

In my review of the new album by The Killers (Battle Born), I was asked whether or not I could provide a break-down of the trends in indie rock over the past eight years, perhaps providing some insight into why the genre never really took off outside of its niche until fairly recently (this does link to the review, I promise). And while I'm sure it would be of great interest for everyone for me to dissect the evolution of indie rock over the past eight years outside of the mainstream, it's also the sort of project that would prove rather difficult.

The first major problem you run into is that you immediately don't have a defined metric to measure the influence/popularity of the music. The Billboard Charts, flawed as they are, do a fairly decent job of charting what's popular in the US, even if they don't always provide good reasons why said songs are popular. But given that the indie scene has never really had coherent, organized charts, determining the trends and ideas that indie rock adopts over time is significantly more difficult to track. It also doesn't help matters that indie rock as a genre is so varied and eclectic (particularly with some of the weirder, underground bands) and (generally) more intelligent that the sphere of influences and trends aren't as defined and static as those in the mainstream. There isn't the same 'producer-driven' archetypes (like the prevalence of the Neptunes in the early-to-mid 2000s) in indie rock, simply because those widespread 'indie producers' weren't nearly as prominent and powerful as those in the pop or hip-hop scenes.

In fact, if we're going to be completely blunt, the lack of success of indie rock seemed to cause the scene to mutate even further, some segments becoming more and more inaccessible. Outside of isolated points, it's taken indie rock eight years to be relevant on the charts again, and in that time, some acts completely gave up on mainstream airplay and became so inaccessible that even Pitchfork had a difficult time puzzling out what the fuck the act was doing.

And even taking all of that in mind, it would be inaccurate to say the indie bands failed, per se. The majority of them kept on making music, mostly within their own purview. If anything, the indie acts didn't disappear, they just dropped out of sight of the pop charts. Now, there are all sorts of theories why this happened, and I have three that I'll share before I begin the review (trust me, these are both relevant).

album review: 'battle born' by the killers

Do any of you remember the music scene in 2004?

If you don't, you should. 2004 was a year where pop music delivered songs that were both critically acclaimed and amazingly popular. The trademark song of that year, 'Yeah' by Usher and featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris, came off of Usher's hit album Confessions and managed to catapult him straight into the A-List. This was also the year that Kanye West exploded into the mainstream, the year 'Hey Ya!' by OutKast charted, the year where gangster rap hit the critical junction of mainstream success and high quality. 

And it wasn't just in hip-hop either. On the metal front, rap metal had finally imploded (with the exception of Linkin Park, who released the relatively solid Meteora that year), and nu metal was on its last legs, with Evanescence experiencing their final puff of popularity before returning to irrelevancy (and the world rejoiced). This was also the year Within Temptation released The Silent Force and Nightwish released Once, the latter Nightwish's biggest hit album driven on the strength of its great singles. This was also the year Arjen Lucassen's Ayreon project released The Human Equation, one of my favourite metal albums of all time. I mean, holy shit, that's a whole lot of awesome, even it isn't tied directly to the mainstream.

But if we are talking about the mainstream, we have to talk about rock music. Post-grunge was thankfully dying off, and people were searching for what would be the next advancement in the genre. Some thought it'd be pop rock or punk rock, driven on the helm of Jimmy Eat World and Green Day. Hell, Green Day released American Idiot in 2004, which was both a critical success and a huge hit, driving Green Day into a resurgence of popularity, and propelling bands embracing the emo aesthetic to the forefront. If I'm being  embarrassingly honest, I don't think this is a bad thing - I like pop-rock, and both Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco made great albums in the following years.

But even that's not the most interesting thing that happened in the 2004 rock scene - because that was the year indie rock exploded into the mainstream. This was the year where Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Arcade Fire, the Garden State soundtrack, where all of these acts somehow managed to gain mainstream attention and acclaim, and for a few brief seconds, there was a hope that indie rock might actually take hold in the modern consciousness and become the 'new grunge'.

That didn't happen. And for the reason why, I blame The Killers.

album review: 'tempest' by bob dylan

It's really hard to review Bob Dylan.

I mean, where do you start? What frame of reference should you use? Bob Dylan isn't just one of the best artists of all time, he's also one of the most prolific, with a huge share of great music and a fair share of the awful as well. He's one of the best, most impacting songwriters of the past generation, and any bearded indie rocker owes at least something to the man, now fully in the autumn of his life.

And speaking as someone who isn't completely familiar with every album and every live cut and every one of the hundreds of bootlegs that Dylan produced, I feel more than a little overwhelmed by the sheer weight of history behind the man, even more so because he's a fantastic writer and poet and musician one that I admire tremendously. For god's sake, I can look ninety degrees to my right from my kitchen table and see a framed poster of the man!

So I guess it can't hurt to provide a little context to where I'm coming from when I write this review, at least when it comes to my 'Dylan' experience. Well, here it is: it's painfully limited. I'm familiar with his hits - everyone should be - and I can thank my uncle for getting me to listen to Infidels, which Dylan's first legitimately great album of the 80s. From there, it's Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, Highway 61 Revisited, and really not much else. To say I feel out of my depth stepping into a review of his most recent album, particularly when I'm not even all that familiar with his material this decade, isn't hard to believe.

But then again, Bob Dylan, of all the albums and artists I've ever reviewed, has always been a poet first (musician second, singer third). And I have a literary background, which does provide some applicable skills to assess and analyse the man's work. And of all of the artists I've examined so far, I feel the least compunctions in branding this man's work 'art'. And art earns some of its worth and meaning due to the experience and interpretation of the viewer - and since we're all different, no one person's view (with the exception of the artist, because the whole 'death of the artist' theory is a load of horseshit) is sacrosanct.

So yes, while I will admit that not being familiar with Dylan's entire discography or indeed the majority of it adds something of an asterisk to my review and criticism, I do know good music. I know good poetry. And I can recognize good art when I see it. 

And without further ado, let's examine Bob Dylan's newest album, Tempest.