album review: 'frame by frame' by cassadee pope

Let's talk about The Voice.

Formed in the waning years of American Idol, The Voice was a desperate move by NBC to regain some market share given that several of their mainstream programs were getting crushed by Fox and CBS. They made the gamble that if they brought in several recognizable (and bankable) music stars who were desperate to regain the spotlight and had them 'overcome' the image-based discrimination of the pop scene, they'd capitalize on the degeneration of American Idol. So recruiting Christina Aguliera, who hasn't done anything worth mentioning on the charts in years, Adam Levine, who had just come out of a failed album and was hit with writer's block, Cee-Lo Green, who had just had a massive hit and was looking to coast on it as long as he could, and Blake Shelton, who hadn't had chart success in almost a decade, NBC put the show out and it was a massive hit and proved instrumental in reviving the careers of the majority of the hosts as well.

But here's the element that gets interesting; most of the 'winners' from The Voice did not really succeed in the same vein as Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood or even Adam Lambert or Phillip Phillips. The albums were delayed, the hits didn't really materialize, and the show didn't turn into the massive chart-defining money spinner that American Idol had been. In short, it's hard for me to look at this show and any of the winning contestants as just props to reinvigorate the careers of established artists. That's not denigrating any of their talent, but it's worth noting that Zac Brown might have actually been wrong when he slammed Blake Shelton and how his influence had led to success for his chosen stars - because it hasn't.

But perhaps this is going to change now with the arrival of Miss Cassadee Pope, the winner from the third season of The Voice (under Shelton's tutelage) and who has just released her new pop-country album Frame By Frame. Now to be completely honest, I never watched The Voice, half because I didn't care and half because, well, I don't have cable. So with that in mind, I took a look at Cassadee Pope's major label debut - did she rise above her reality show roots like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood ahead of her?

video review: 'too weird to live, too rare to die!' by panic! at the disco

Once again, it took longer than I wanted to get this up, but I'm happy with the review. First of many for this week - Danny Brown, Pusha T, Cassadee Pope, of Montreal (which I'm delaying for as long as I can) and Austin Mahone. And I'm going to visit extended family this weekend - joy of joys.

Stay tuned for tomorrow!

album review: 'too weird to live, too rare to die!' by panic! at the disco

It's common knowledge in the music industry that the last groups to jump on a trending bandwagon are often the worst. These are the acts that can only get success via peripheral engagement with the big stars, the desperate acts shoved out by the label to wring every last penny out the dying trend. And if the genre is already facing some critical malign, you can bet the worst of it will be dumped on the groups at the end. And today, we're going to be talking about one of those groups from the dying embers of the pop rock genre in the mid-to-late 2000s, which somehow managed to carry on and even prosper.

Yes, folks, we're talking about Panic! At The Disco, one of the most interesting - and frustrating - stories of the pop rock genre, complete with critical and audience polarization. Simply mentioning this band often gets you wildly differing opinions - and the sad fact is that most of those opinions aren't particularly well informed, or were shaped by the blowback against the 'emo genre' (and really, it's hard to say how much of that backlash was deserved).

I should explain. Panic! At The Disco released their first album in 2005, titled A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, and it immediately polarized critics and audiences. The musical style took the vaudeville-esque showmanship of My Chemical Romance and paired it with the bitingly acerbic and surprisingly insightful lyrics of Fall Out Boy, and combined, the album is more than a bit of a wordy, pretentious, surprisingly listenable mess. Critics either loved it or hated it with a passion, and the audience was divided along similar lines, the fans loving it for the great hooks and attempts at complexity (about half of which paid dividends), the others hating it for being pretentious, too sarcastic for their own good, or for being astoundingly flamboyant and theatrical (often dumped under the pejorative of 'it's gay'). And really, all of that is true to some extent, and how much you could like A Fever You Can't Sweat Out is more linked to how much you could tolerate all of it.

But the band weren't interested in repeating themselves, so when they came back in 2008 with Pretty Odd, they threw a massive curveball by releasing an album that sounded like a modernized version of the baroque psychedelic pop of the Beatles and especially the Beach Boys from the late 60s. The majority of the fans and critics were thrown off-guard and while the band won some measure of critical acclaim (mostly because the album is really goddamn great), most of their teenage fanbase deserted them in confusion. Which is a damn shame, because the album is really something special, almost reaching the point of earning the label of the 'modern day Brian Wilson'.

However, a few critics pointed out that the band would have likely maintained more relevance if they had stuck with speaking to today's generation instead of aping that of the past - and Panic! At The Disco chose to do just that in 2011 with Vices & Virtues. It was a creative direction that split the band in two, leaving them without their primary songwriter Ryan Ross. Thus, the album does feel transitional - and, like all albums from Panic! At The Disco, a bit of a mess - but at the same time, it was probably my favourite album from them. Yes, it's not quite as complex as their previous works, but it nailed the elements that cemented Panic! At The Disco as the spiritual successors to Brian Wilson in my mind: incredibly catchy hooks, a wide diversity of instrumentation, surprisingly insightful lyrics, and way more heartfelt emotion than you'd expect from a bunch of leftovers from emo pop rock. I highly recommend the album and for me it was one of the highlights of 2011...

And it flopped. Not critically - while most critics have never been the biggest fans of Panic! At The Disco, there was probably the most positive critical consensus with Vices & Virtues - but it certainly didn't sell well. Of course, that was to be expected, because it was released in 2011, with the club boom that wasn't nearly dead yet. On top of that, the label's choice of singles was pretty lousy (they should have led with 'Memories' and pivoted to 'Sarah Smiles'), and to be honest, Panic! At the Disco had lost a ton of fans over their career with their wildly shifting artistic direction. Plus, most former fans had long ago branded them as one of those 'emo acts' that we're all supposed to hate now, along with Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance.

But with Fall Out Boy's return this year with Save Rock And Roll, I wasn't surprised to see Panic! At The Disco preparing to release an album, one that was reportedly supposed to be about Vegas and the darker, seedier side of that town in the modern age, partially inspired by Hunter S. Thompson's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. At this point, I threw up my hands helplessly and went into this album expecting a deranged, cacophonous mess, but hopefully one with some great songs and interesting ideas. Did Panic! At The Disco's Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die! succeed?

video review: 'bad blood' by bastille

Really not sure how this retro review will go down, to be honest. I'm pretty pleased with it, but you never know.

This week will promise to be absolutely goddamn insane, and I'm going to try to cover as much as I can, but with family coming down on Friday and a full work schedule as it is... this could be a tough week. Stay tuned!

album review: 'bad blood' by bastille (RETRO REVIEW)

Here's something that you might not know about me: I'm a huge follower of the Billboard Hot 100 charts. I find them surprisingly fascinating in a perverse sort of way, watching what gets airplay and mainstream success thanks to a nebulous ranking which is plagued by changes in policy, odd editorial direction, or outright mistakes. The funny thing is that the music industry has had something of a love/hate relationship with Billboard throughout the decades, particularly in the mid-to-late 90s, where the record industry manipulated the charts through carefully timed single releases (to abuse the policy where a single had to be released to chart, neglecting album cuts, so the label would wait until a song had peak radio airplay then release the single to maximize chart position). And then you have cases like earlier this year, where Billboard finally decided to include YouTube streams in response to 'Gangnam Style' being blocked for weeks by a lousy Maroon 5 song ('One More Night') - and then the goddamn Harlem Shake went to #1 for five weeks.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that every week, I make a point of going through the Hot 100 and checking out what I've been missing - as I've said, I've got a populist streak, and it makes sense to be engaged. And in the course of doing so, I've noticed a few anomalies on the charts, songs that sound a little out-of-place - intriguingly so, in a way. And one of those songs comes from the act I'm going to talk about today: Bastille.

Bastille is a band that falls into an intriguing category for me: indie rock bands that most music critics don't want to cover and yet are widely liked by the mainstream, otherwise known as 'silent majority' acts. This year, the acts that fit the bill are bands like The 1975, or Bastille, or The Neighborhood (who I'll be covering a little later) - and it often seems like music critics only review these bands with the strongest of trepidation. And to be fair, it's not hard to see why: these are acts that are being pushed towards the mainstream by the label, and with the right single or Glee cover, they can rapidly become massive hits. This happened in 2011 with Foster The People, it happened in 2012 with fun., and now it's clear the labels are looking to recreate that success this year - and some critics resent this because they feel these bands are shallow facsimiles of what 'authentic' indie music is. Now the whole argument regarding what is artistically 'authentic' or 'underground' these days with the rise of the internet has gotten insanely convoluted and more than a little stupid, so let me drop my solitary opinion here: I'm going to be making my authenticity judgement based on the music and the lyrics, not some hypothetical indie criteria or whether or not Pitchfork slobbers all over them. And I since I've got a stronger pop sensibility than some - and because I still need more time to get through Dream Theater's discography - I'm going to take a look at Bastille's debut album Bad Blood. Does it rise above its 'silent majority' status?

video review: 'bangerz' by miley cyrus

This review took a bit longer than I expected, but it's out. Finally.

Next week will be insane - five or six new albums dropping, plus I'm going to try and knock off a few retrospectives. A life, what's that? Stay tuned!

album review: 'bangerz' by miley cyrus

I'm sick of people talking about Miley Cyrus.

Yes, I'm aware of the hypocrisy here with me making that statement and immediately jumping into my review of her recent album, but here's the big difference between me and what most of the non-thinking members of the entertainment press did in the aftermath of the VMAs: I'm going to talk about her music. I don't care about her image or her supposedly 'scandalous' behaviour, and as much as I'm annoyed she found a way to get twerking inserted in the cultural lexicon, I'm really not all that bothered by the fact she managed to drive up controversy at the VMAs and give the program another couple years of relevance. Frankly, the level of slut-shaming by too many correspondents 'commenting' on this issue has reached disgusting levels, particularly when you consider historical context - I mean, maybe I'm just looking at this from somebody who knows his country music, but do any of you remember Billy Ray Cyrus' early persona? He was the one who wore the sleeveless shirts and conducted his concerts like a Chip 'n Dale show and showed up in Dolly Parton's 'Romeo' where she and a gaggle of other female country singers mooned over how incredibly hot he was - in 1992, no less! And sure, he got flack for it, but when Miley does the same thing in a pop context, everyone loses their goddamn minds?

Ugh. No, if I'm going to take an issue from Miley's VMA performance, it'd be with the music - it sounded terrible, mostly because Miley Cyrus isn't very good live (she goes sharp and off-key more often than she should) and was working with a lousy song. If anything, that's been one of the big issues I've had with Miley Cyrus as an 'artist': she has been given a ton of really terrible material by her handlers who seem bewildered by the fact that Miley clearly wants to take her image in a much more provocative direction. If she's given good songs, she tends to be fairly decent on them, as evidenced by her presence on the excellent 'Ashtrays & Heartbreaks' by Snoop Lion - which, I should add, is still one of my favourite songs of the year. And thus, I think I was the only critic stepping away from the VMAs thinking, 'Well, she's got a new album coming out and she's apparently got songwriting credits on the majority of the songs - this could actually be interesting, all things considered!' And given that Miley at least seems invested in her material (in comparison with her fellow pop starlet Selena Gomez), it might come across as better than expected.

So I gave her new album Bangerz a listen - did Miley Cyrus manage to present something interesting?

video review: 'redneck crazy' by tyler farr

So yeah, another day, another mostly mediocre bro-country act. Man, this one was a chore to get through.

Next up is the big one: Miley Cyrus. Stay tuned, folks, this could get ugly.

album review: 'redneck crazy' by tyler farr

We return - again - to country music, where things have certainly escalated.

When I originally wrote my Special Comment on the state of modern country music, I did not expect the response I got. I expected maybe a bit of praise, a larger bit of hatred as a holdover from the Justin Moore review (keep the hatred coming, folks, I can take it), and then for it to sink like a stone. I did not expect to be pointed towards a growing contingent who are growing very angry about the state of modern country music, or to discover the country music feuds to be heating up in a big way with more and more stars taking sides, and then to be contacted directly by the country music correspondent from Entertainment Weekly! Suddenly, I was inundated by country music news and links to underground country acts that I'm excited to explore, and it appears my Special Comment may just be one of many from mainstream publications talking about and analyzing this issue. A feud within country music hasn't been this enflamed since the 2000s, and with the rise of social media and instant responses, I can see this blowing up in a big way.

But let me make this part absolutely clear: I'm still a music critic and not a gossip columnist, and my job is not to get involved in the drama of the stars or their various feuds. I definitely stand by my criticism of certain other online critics for their refusal to cover country music on narrow-minded genre classifications, but I've found good music in traditional and neotraditional country music, and I've even managed to find good stuff in the pop-country and bro-country subgenres as well. Admittedly, I've got more of a pop sensibility than most, but good music is good music, and as long as I can defend my critical opinions, I'm gong to be fair with my coverage regardless of genre.

So when I heard about the rumblings against Tyler Farr's debut bro-country album Redneck Crazy, I took a deep breath and kept my senses. Sure, the guy has basically come out of nowhere and had a criminally underwritten Wikipedia page, but maybe the hatred was overblown, right?

video review: 'days are gone' by haim

Wow, review number fifty, and only one of them have broken a thousand views. Eh, this sort of shit takes time, I've accepted that.

Next up is Tyler Farr and the newest update from bro-country. Spoilers, it doesn't end well.

album review: 'days are gone' by haim

You know, for as many solo female acts I've reviewed this year, I haven't actually covered that many girl groups, or at least in the traditional definition of a pop girl group. I mean, the closest would probably be Icona Pop, but that was a duo and after that? Savages and Echo Bench were girl 'bands', not precisely fitting the stereotypical definition of what would be considered a girl 'group' in the vein of, say, the Spice Girls or TLC. 

The truth of the matter is that girl groups haven't been nearly as successful in North America than internationally, where they continue to exist to this day, particularly in j-pop and k-pop. Of the international girl group acts, I probably like the UK-based girl group Girls Aloud the most, almost to the point where I'd consider them my favourite of the genre (although most of the credit must go to top-notch producing team Xenomania). Yes, seriously - as with boy bands, girl groups didn't quite go away in the UK, and while they didn't quite crossover, acts like Little Mix and Fifth Harmony have achieved some minor success stateside thanks to the influence of Simon Cowell. And really, it's only been a matter of time: as soon as boy bands starting coming back, I knew girl groups would be right around the corner.

So with that, let's talk about HAIM (I guarantee I'm pronouncing this wrong however I say it), a group that really toes the line between girl band and girl group, and which broke into public view last year. These three sisters all do play their own instruments, but they claim to draw a lot of their influence from mid-90s female R&B acts like TLC, which is why I stand by the 'girl group' mention. Strangely, though, many critics have drawn the much sharper comparison to not girl groups or girl bands, but to Fleetwood Mac of all things. That, plus the critical acclaim, was enough to catch some interest from me, and I gave their debut album 'Days Are Gone' a listen. What do I think?

video review: 'the bluegrass album' by alan jackson

Holy crap, this one came together fast. I don't know what it was, but I didn't really have a huge amount to say and this review came out surprisingly quick. Better for me - brevity is good - but still...

Next review is HAIM's 'Days Are Gone', and then maybe I might get a chance to tackle a few indie acts before Miley. And yes, I'm working on the Dream Theater review. Give it time, people.

album review: 'the bluegrass album' by alan jackson

When people ask me why I listen to country music, or how they can get into country music, I point at Alan Jackson.

It's kind of hard for me to fully articulate why Alan Jackson stands out for me in terms of country singers from the 90s in a way that few of his peers do. He's a superb musician with a gift for catchy, memorable melodies and lyrics with a superb flow. He is completely unafraid to write political songs and he's intelligent enough to work to capture many layers of nuance in those songs (signified in 'Where Were You', one of only two songs that managed to properly memorialize September 11 by any artist). He's not a man who actively seems to get angry in his material, but you can tell he is the kind of man you do not screw with, as evidenced by his legendary performance at the 1999 Country Music Awards, where he switched song mid-solo from one of his own to George Jones' 'Choices', in protest of how one of the legends of country music had been pressured to trim his performance for commercials and had bowed out of the ceremony. 

And as a neotraditionalist country singer - one of the most successful at that - Alan Jackson has been fighting for decades to preserve the historical spirit and culture of the medium. Besides releasing a ton of amazing music in this vein, he also recorded with George Strait a song called 'Murder On Music Row', where he directly criticized the slide of country music towards the mainstream courtesy of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain. It was a controversial song on country radio in 2000, and arguably contributed in a big way for country receding from the mainsteam in the early years of that decade (besides just being a goddamn great song that nails commentary on the genre without getting preachy). 

So really, it was only a matter of time before the lead crusader of traditional country music came back, with the slide of country, yet again, towards the mainstream. And while Chris Young has accumulated some fame and critical success, he doesn't quite have the same pull within Nashville that Alan Jackson has. And thus, I wasn't surprised in the slightest when Alan Jackson announced his new album would be titled The Bluegrass Album, one that he has been 'threatening' the country music industry that he would make for years now. 

Now, I must confess, I'm not the most familiar with bluegrass as a genre, but I know enough to get by and if I'm looking for a way into the genre, I can't think of a better introduction than that of a country legend who has been preparing for this album for nearly a decade. And thus, I chose to take a listen to Alan Jackson's The Bluegrass Album - how did it turn out?

video review: 'pure heroine' by lorde

Ah, it's good to be back on the wagon (felt ill yesterday, didn't do all that much, that's basically the reason this review is as late as it is). So yeah, Lorde - great ideas, not perfect execution.

Alan Jackson's coming up next. Stay tuned!

album review: 'pure heroine' by lorde

About a year ago, a critic that I like made an interesting statement regarding the evolution of the pop charts. He commented that due to the success of 'Call Me Maybe' by Carly Rae Jepsen, the return of the boy bands, and the fact that Justin Bieber could finally claim to have real chart hits, that indie rock wouldn't be the music that took over - instead, the next few years would be dominated by what he deemed 'teeny-bopper crap'. This statement, in its own way, was rather prophetic, as it did predict the chart success of Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, and Miley Cyrus over the course of this year, but I wouldn't quite say indie rock has been replaced either. On the contrary, I'd make the argument that considering the rise of digital music and the greater prominence of indie acts, the charts are somewhat split right now between acts moving towards smarter and more mature music and those moving in the exact opposite direction, to mixed success on both ends.

But could there be a possible act to rise up from the intersection of both worlds? Enter Lorde (real name Ella Yelich O'Connor), a sixteen year old New Zealand singer who released her debut album this year titled Pure Heroine, and who has achieved a shocking amount of chart success with her first single 'Royals'. And while I have a healthy amount of skepticism regarding the quality of teenage stars, Lorde has accumulated a certain degree of critical acclaim and praise for her 'razor-sharp lyrics', and her claims to be inspired by Lana Del Rey and Kanye West. And I was even more intrigued by the fact that she actually turned down Katy Perry who wanted to recruit her as an opening act, so I picked up Pure Heroine (heh, good pun) and gave it a spin. What did I think?

special comment: the state of country music

In the year 2000, two of the greatest country acts of the decade teamed up to perform a song formerly written by bluegrass artists Larry Cordle and Larry Shell. The song was never released as a single, but received significant airplay anyway due to its controversial nature in the country music industry. It was a song about how traditional and neotraditional country music - and the performers who made it - were being shoved to the sidelines in favour of mainstream pop crossover success. The song spoke of how artists like Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, and George Jones would never have had success in this industry climate - they, and the culture and history that they represented, would have been ignored. The legends, the icons of the genre, would have been likely been forgotten.

The song was titled 'Murder On Music Row' and it was made a hit by Alan Jackson and George Strait - and the situation of which they were singing...

Well, it's happening again.

On September 12, The Nashville Scene published a breakdown of the lyrics on the top 20 songs of the country music charts, indicating the common lyrical threads and the genre's shift towards party songs centered on beer, trucks, and girls. The case the article made was not to highlight the individual successes or failures of the songs on said list, but to point out the astounding similarities between the songs in terms of subject matter, theme, and even lyrical content. Furthermore, given that the extreme majority of acts on the list were performed by solo male country acts, the argument could be made that the average listener would not be able to tell these men apart. There is only one songs fronted by a woman on this list - Carrie Underwood, and I would have a hard time calling the American Idol winner a country singer over being a pop star. On the list of songs, the noticeable outliers come from Tim McGraw - a stalwart of the genre who has been around for decades - and a song penned by Bob Dylan sung by Darius Rucker, the former frontman of Hootie & The Blowfish! Neither song was in the top ten.

On September 19, Billboard magazine released an article showing how a growing number of country acts are showing concern regarding the sameness of their peers' content. Zac Brown of the Zac Brown Band said, 'there is not a lot of the country format I enjoy listening to. If I hear one more tailgate in the moonlight, Daisy Dukes song, I wanna throw up. There's songs out right now on the radio that make me... ashamed to even be in the same format as some of those artists.' Think about this for a moment: the frontman of a critically acclaimed country act from rural Georgia, from a town of just over 5000 people, made the statement that he is ashamed to be in the same format as these artists. He goes on to call Luke Bryan's 'That's My Kinda Night' 'the worst song he's ever heard.' He goes on to target the country music industry, saying it puts 'songs and people on a pedestal that have no integrity to them whatsoever', and to the writers of these songs, 'you can look on song credits and see some of the same songwriters on every one. There has been, like, ten number one songs in the last two to three years that were written by the same people, and the exact same words, just arranged different ways.'

Zac Brown is right. So is Gary Allan, who, in an interview with Larry King, said 'I feel like we have lost our genre.' So is Kacey Musgraves, who said in an interview with British GQ when asked about what trends in music need to die, she replied, 'Anyone singing about trucks, in any form, in any song, anywhere. Literally, just stop - nobody cares! It's not fun to listen to.' Unfortunately, Miss Musgraves is likely wrong on this front, at least in comparison with the programming that Nashville has been pushing for country radio over the past few years, because it has become abundantly clear that a growing audience wants it. Incidentally, Kacey Musgraves released an album this year titled Same Trailer, Different Park, a controversial yet critical acclaimed debut album where she spoke openly about topics such as deteriorating rural culture, religion, and even same-sex marriage. It is one of the best albums of this year and will beat out Daft Punk, Kanye West, Vampire Weekend, Deerhunter, and a slew of other critically acclaimed acts on my Top 10 list.

Outside of major professional publications, Robert Christgau, and AllMusic, it was ignored. In most top ten lists by mainstream critics, I suspect it will be forgotten. And while it has sold better that you might expect, reaching #2 on the Billboard 200 it was far from a smash hit, with the lead single only reaching #14. Oh, and the album it was up against that week, the major competition the label was setting Miss Musgraves against? Justin Timberlake's comeback album The 20/20 Experience, which proceeded to sell approximately 968,000 copies that week alone. That week, Kacey Musgraves sold about 42,000. For a more fitting comparison, the previous week Luke Bryan sold 150,000 copies with a compilation album, a glorified spring break mixtape. 

Now I'm not here to make a value judgement on whether I think the trend towards the mainstream is a bad thing - as much as mainstream modern country in all of its varieties isn't really my thing, I can acknowledge good music when I hear it and there is some there. But what is a much more worrying trend is the sidelining of promising new acts like Kacey Musgraves, a female singer-songwriter with incredible chops, fresh ideas, and an excellent sense of solid country music, in favour of meat-headed, practically interchangeable male country stars who have pop crossover success by catering to the lowest common denominator. From a business point of view, Nashville is making a killing on these country acts, but it does not reflect a sustainable business model when you put your most promising and intelligent new singer-songwriter in a decade up against Justin TImberlake. But at the same time, the country music industry is a business, and if they want to milk and oversaturate the market with mainstream male country acts to roll in the dough until the world gets sick of them, that's their choice. But there's a much bigger issue at stake here, and that is reflected in the comments made by Kacey Musgraves, Gary Allan, and Zac Brown: the loss of culture in country music. A loss of flavour and texture and the feeling that the songs are informed by authentic real emotions and songwriters who know their history and the place country music has played within the United States for nearly a century. At this point, Nashville seems to have forsaken this, presumably under the belief that nobody in their audience wants it.

But more and more evidence is coming to light to me that that is not the case. Recently I reviewed the newest album released by country singer Justin Moore, titled Off The Beaten Path. Now that album was terrible and I stand by everything I said about it, but it was something in the comments to that video that both concerned me and got me thinking, because people jumped to the defense of Justin Moore and not just because they thought his music was good, but they thought his music was relatable. They could connect with it, they saw in the offensive pandering nonsense that was that album moments with which they could connect - it was something. And they gravitated to those songs about small town USA and God and rural culture and all of that not solely because they were something they could relate to, but because mainstream country music has nearly completely abandoned that demographic. Or worse still, they attempt to appease that demographic with shallow, vapid pandering that sounds and looks utterly soulless, and yet the audience will take anything they can get. And frankly, I can empathize with their concerns - their defense of Justin Moore, who at least appears to believe the crap he's selling, is pretty much identical to my defense of Kacey Musgraves, at least on basic principles - we're both looking for culture in country music.

So what happened? How did we get here? What led Nashville to throw their history and culture under the ties of a Chevy truck lining up for a tailgate? Well, there's a lot of factors in that. One I can definitely pinpoint is within the country music industry itself - they've always gunned for the mainstream audience, with country pop rising in the late-70s and 80s and the explosion of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain in the 90s. But in those climates, there were still traditional and neotraditional country stalwarts like Alan Jackson and George Strait who fought to preserve that history, and there was an audience that bought it. But when Nashville found out they could appease that demographic by pandering to southern pride and small town nationalist spirit and patriotism, those that fought for culture and history were forced to the sidelines. 

And how can Nashville get away with that? Well, that's a twofold problem, and here's where things get ugly, because one of the groups that deserves blame are modern music critics, particularly those who are my age or a little older. The majority of critics outside of major publications like AllMusic and Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, who must cover country by obligation, have ignored and marginalized country music for a long time now, preferring to cover the newest underground hip-hop mixtape or independent album that nobody outside of a very, very small community of music nerds will ever care about. I could go on about how this attitude betrays the spirit of populism which the best critics have always embraced, but that misses the meat of the message: by ignoring country music, the critical press shut down the artistic conversation with country music. They made the implicit statement that there is no artistry or craft or intelligence or meaningful commentary in country music. And I would be remiss not to mention the political angle, where certain people, ignorant of country music as a genre, dismissed it as music for small town, right-leaning white trash rednecks who were incapable of appreciating 'better' music. This sort of thinking and dismissal is cowardly, shameful, and utterly despicable, and it shows most critics as narrow-minded as the demographic they dismissed.

But the country music industry heard it and realized they didn't need critical acclaim to sell records, unlike other genres like metal and indie rock and occasionally hip-hop. They didn't need us. So instead they started catering to the lowest common denominator more aggressively than they ever have before, putting money and professional songwriters behind anyone with a hint of talent, and they reaped the rewards, particularly considering the culture of anti-intellectualism and victimization that was being adopted by the stagnating and unfairly ignored rural population of the United States. And while I will not claim that country music was directly responsible for shoving large tracts of the United States towards the right politically, you can't deny that with the success of acts like Jason Aldean and Justin Moore and libelous songs like 'Have You Forgotten' by Darryl Worley that it didn't happen. And with the role country music played in the aftermath of 9/11, things got even worse - as much as I never liked The Dixie Chicks, they didn't deserve to have their careers ruined because they were right about the War on Terror before everyone else realized it. Like it or not, country music did contribute to the increased polarization of America, and the critics not doing their jobs by ignoring covering country music only made things worse, because the cultural conversation stopped. 

So thus I wasn't surprised that I get comments on my country music reviews saying that I shouldn't even be covering country music, because I'm a Canadian city boy and thus must be some sort of privileged white-collar Commie homosexual - even though I've been listening to country music for about twenty years. Even though I know more about country music than I do about most hip-hop and metal and electronica. Even though I'm the only critic on Youtube who has even bothers to cover country music and review it fairly, to give it a goddamn chance. And sure, YouTube is an echo chamber and any critical opinion gets pounced upon, but there was something different about this, because it reflects the fact that there is something seriously wrong with the shape country music is taking, that acts like Justin Moore are making money simply because they can pander to rural pride and the starving audiences will take anything they can get. And as Zac Brown said in his interview, 'country fans and country listeners deserve to have something better than that, a song that really has something to say. Good music makes you feel something.'

So what's the solution to this? Honestly, I have no idea - if I could solve the increased polarity of America, I probably wouldn't be reviewing albums on the internet. What I will say is this: the increased popularity of country acts in the mainstream won't last. At this point, the market is nearly saturated, and when trends shift and the mainstream public gets sick of country, it's going to ruin a lot of careers. Right now, however, I'm significantly more concerned about two groups: the artists whose careers are suffering now because the industry is sidelining them and whom might never get another chance for the spotlight; and those concerned about American culture and history, particularly those who love country music and who don't want to see the genre implode in the same way other oversaturated musical genres collapsed, like disco and prog rock and punk and hair metal and grunge. But country is unique because so much of it is linked directly and is informed by American culture and American history. If you forget where your culture comes from, and the people who represent it instead of those who are looking to profit off of it in order to make a quick buck, you lose something you can never get back.

Alan Jackson and George Strait understood this when they recorded 'Murder On Music Row' back in 2000 - and really, the only reasons pop country imploded at the end of the 90s are the near-simultaneous failures of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain, and 9/11, where Nashville correctly realized that the USA needed a connection with its culture and its roots more than ever, or else the blow to the nation's spirit would never heal. But this time, things are different, and I don't see a good ending for traditional country music. Or, to put it another way, Alan Jackson released a new album this week: how many of you have heard it?

That's what I thought. I don't want to see another murder on music row. And why do I care? Well, the same reason Alan Jackson and George Strait and Zac Brown and Gary Allan and Kacey Musgraves care: I love country music, and there's room on the charts for both culture and partying. To quote Zac Brown again, 'I'm opinionated because I care so much about the music and the songs'. 

He's not alone.

video review: 'the 20/20 experience 2 of 2' by justin timberlake

Yes, I know it's late, but I do have a social life to keep up, and I went out before I could do any proper promotion. It happens.

So, coming up will either be Lorde or Alan Jackson. Probably the latter, because nobody else touches country, but you never know. Stay tuned!

album review: 'the 20/20 experience 2 of 2' by justin timberlake

Okay, let's try this again.

For those of you who don't know, I've already said my lengthy piece on Justin Timberlake earlier this year, and as much as I was hoping that my views would evolve or change, I'm still not the biggest fan of that album, and the majority of my issues with Justin Timberlake have unfortunately persisted six months later. For a brief recap, I did like some of the elements of The 20/20 Experience - the production, most of the instrumentation, and the fact that Justin seemed to be actually trying - but to me the album fell short because of serious bloat and the fact that the lyrics simply weren't up to the task of sustaining longer songs. These problems seemed to be linked to a few issues that have always stopped me from really liking Justin Timberlake, for as much class and swagger and professionalism he brings to pop music, I've never liked his towering ego or the fact that he never seemed to care as much about his art as other artists. Some acts seem like they make pop music because they want to enhance the medium or express deeply held emotions that they can't articulate any other way - Justin Timberlake, on the other hand, seems to make pop music just because he can, almost on a whim, and he's good enough to get away with such nonchalance when it comes to his career because he's seriously talented and supported by some of the best acts in the industry (particularly Timbaland, who is filling the role of Quincy Jones to Justin's Michael Jackson).

But that wasn't to deride the elements of The 20/20 Experience that worked - and really, it was an album that worked better in pieces than as a whole. I was happy to see 'Mirrors', the best song on the album and a favourite of mine, rise to chart success, but at the same time, it was also a song that was criticized for being a prime example of Justin Timberlake's hubris. And while that was certainly true, the bigger example of that arrogance for me was his sudden announcement in May that he was going to be releasing another album later this year, the follow-up to his March release called The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2 (man, that's an awkward title - that 'of 2' doesn't fit well there), reportedly composed of extra material from the original recording sessions.

Now to me, this set off all kinds of warning bells. For one, it smacked of a cash-in - given how well The 20/20 Experience sold, it wasn't entirely surprising that Justin was looking to terminate the label obligations he clearly loathed by dropping a second record that year. But from an artistic angle, it also was a massive warning sign for me, because not only did it mean that Justin took the same recording methodology into the studio with him with the bloated songs and lack of restraint, but it also looked like these were the leftover tracks that weren't strong enough to make it to the first album (and judging by the disappointing chart performance of 'Take Back The Night', the first single, the public might agree). But even if they weren't and were grouped for the second album during the initial recording process... Jesus, JT, did you not learn the lesson that Billie Joe Armstrong and Green Day suffered through last year, releasing three albums of material in the space of months when they all could have been trimmed of the chaff and compressed down to a single, much more solid release? Furthermore, the element of expectation is completely gone here, and any element of wonder garnered from the return from hiatus is absent. To me, this album was a bad idea from the start, and I went in with low, low expectations about how well it would materialize.

So, how did The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2 turn out?

video review: 'the bones of what you believe' by chvrches

And now the second review. Phew, that's tiring. Now to prepare for the real challenge tomorrow...

Okay Justin Timberlake, let's try this again.

video review: 'this is... icona pop' by icona pop

The first of two videos coming out today (well, today as I measure it, which means the day ends as soon as I crash), and it's the worse of the two first. Can't imagine this review'll go over with much controversy whatsoever...

Second one is CHVRCHES - stay tuned!