Back before I was doing video reviews, back before I had my blog, back in 2011, I reviewed the new albums from two aspiring boy bands, One Direction and The Wanted. Both were rising stars on the American charts with their respective songs, 'Glad You Came' and 'What Makes You Beautiful'. Both hailed from England, and were poised to take North America by storm... And that didn't happen. Despite the occasional single propelled through the charts for a single week (before crashing and burning), One Direction were the band that made the largest musical impact, seemingly leaving The Wanted to fizzle out on the other side of the pond. For a guy who was expecting a repeat of the TRL boy band wars of the late 90s, I was puzzled by the seeming lack of conflict and why The Wanted didn't seem to build the same audience. Well, if I were to hazard a guess, I think it would come down to two things: one, the marketing power behind One Direction and their highly devoted cult of fans (drawn because One Direction are perversely good at appealing to the deepest insecurities of their fanbase); and two, The Wanted came across as distinctly more mature, a little older and a little slicker, despite the content of their material being roughly analogous to that of their rivals. And in 2012, with silly teen pop music only getting dumber, sillier, and less mature, The Wanted taking themselves as seriously as they did probably wasn't the best move. It also really didn't help matters that Nathan Sykes, one of their better singers, had to take time off because of throat surgery - thankfully he recovered and was able to sing on Ariana Grande's album, but it couldn't have helped The Wanted's momentum going forward. But now they are back with a new album - and apparently their marketing team continues to hate them because this week they're facing down the twin debuts of Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP 2 and Lady Gaga's ARTPOP (which I will get to, give me time). Compared with One Direction, who have their new release later this month and aren't facing, well, any competition, this doesn't look good for The Wanted. And yet, I won't hesitate to make the argument that I actually like The Wanted more than One Direction. Now that's not saying much - neither Justin Timberlake or The Backstreet Boys have anything to worry about here - but The Wanted are opting for a slightly older audience and seem to be trying to emulate The Backstreet Boys' appeal circa Millennium and Black & Blue. So with that in mind, I picked up their newest album Word Of Mouth, a long-delayed album recorded over the course of two years with singles being released as early as a year and a half ago. I have to be honest, I wasn't expecting anything close to good here - was I wrong?
Yeah, this was a bit of a dud, but once again, it happens. Next up is The Wanted, then I'll probably cover ARTPOP. As for MIA... eh, I dunno, I've never been a fan of MIA, and considering the political angle, it could get ugly in a hurry. We'll see.
A lot of people really hate Celine Dion, and frankly, it's not hard to see why. Between the accent, the oversinging, the often underweight lyrics, the fact that she writes none of her own material, the incredible cheesiness of nearly everything she's ever done, and 'My Heart Will Go On' (from Titanic), she's given people plenty of reasons not to like her music. Hell, I remember a friend of mine from university who absolutely despised Celine Dion's voice, and I know she's not really alone there. And coupled with the fact that Celine is another entry in the list of 'silent majority' performers where the fanbase isn't quite as active in aggressively standing up for their favourite artist, the vitriol for Celine tends to outweigh the praise. And it's that same silent majority status that won her fame and fortune throughout the mid-90s that pisses off some people - it's music that's defiantly simple and lyrically uncomplicated aimed at a demographic that probably doesn't explore a lot of music (and doesn't want to) and thus by default I'm supposed to rake her albums over the coals... But you know, I'm not going to do that. I don't think I'll ever call myself a Celine Dion fan - the oversinging, the underweight lyrics, the empty vocal gymnastics that are only really impressive in range and even that has limits, the limited demographic appeal, some terrible covers - but I'm sorry, I can't muster up the hate. For one, I think she has a beautiful voice that is capable of working across a wide emotional range, and while her music might be cheesy, the emotional undercurrent can resonate. There's such a thing as doing simple things right and to me, her closest analogue in another genre would be Andrew W.K. - sure, his music is dumb as hell and extremely basic in composition, but it nails the basics damn near perfectly. If anything, that's the key to Celine Dion's demographic appeal - she's never going to deliver an album with incredible complexity an nuance, but she gets the basics incredibly well. For me, her albums tend to make or break on the songwriting and performance - if Celine is given good songs like 'It's All Coming Back To Me', written by songwriting legend Jim Steinman, she'll kill it in the best possible way. But if the songwriting or the instrumentation is underweight and can't match up to her voice (she operates best with pure bombast, and the other big problem that tends to come up is that her instrumentation or songwriting rarely are strong enough to match it), the songs don't tend to work. It's a matter of balance, and it's a tough one to get with a performer like Celine Dion. But I had to admit that I was a little intrigued when I heard she was leaving her Vegas act and recording a new album this year. Pop music has only gotten more bombastic with heavier percussion and energy, so maybe Celine might actually have a place in the modern pop scene if she modernizes well. So, I took a look at her new album Loved Me Back To Life - how did it turn out?
It's out - are you happy now? I kid, of course, because this review was actually reasonably fun to make. So now I'm going back to working on the reviews for Celine Dion, The Wanted, and M.I.A.. Then Lady Gaga.
If you know music in the past fifteen years, you know Eminem. You probably own one of his albums, considering his classic album The Marshall Mathers LP has gone diamond in the States. He has become a fixture in American pop culture, and with several acclaimed albums under his belt, some could make the argument he has nothing left to prove. And yet I don't think anyone has told Eminem that, as recent releases seem to have taken the form of an artist trying to recapture the spirit of something that he once had and is now gone, and he's never quite managed to find it in the same way. And this is speaking as an Eminem fan who will defend all of his albums. Yes, even Encore and Relapse, a pair of albums that aren't quite as bad as certain folks have made them out to be. Yes, Encore is incredibly uneven and contains some of the worst raps of Eminem's career, but it's also an album that does exactly what it was designed to do: a ritualistic endpoint for Eminem's career (characterized by his drug-induced spiral of depression) capped off by artistic suicide on the last track. And yet, the fans hated it and demanded the return of Slim Shady, and Eminem did just that five years later on Relapse, a tortured and punishingly bleak album where Eminem brought all of the sick nastiness behind Slim Shady to the forefront and said, 'You wanted it, you got it'. The mistakes he made with both of these albums is that stylized artistic ugliness works best with a good core framework, and the haphazard rapping and accents damaged that core and compromised those albums. Fortunately, Eminem corrected this with 2010's Recovery, his spiritual revival where he finally put to bed some of the demons that had been haunting him over the past several years - primarily finding his place in the modern hip-hop landscape, his drug overdose in 2007, his constant issues with women, and finally the death of his best friend Proof in 2006. However, a new problem began cropping up here and on his team-up with Royce de 5'9'' the next year: the instrumentation always felt a little too polished and slick for Eminem, and lacked that gritty edge that made so much of his old material compelling. Furthermore, despite superb technical skills, Eminem's anger now felt directionless as he had solved the majority of his issues, and the resulting albums felt unfocused and too dour for their own good. The nadir of this was 'Lighters', a momentum-killing turd of a song that didn't work for me in the slightest and epitomized the worst symptoms of both poor instrumentation and unfocused rage. And I've got to be honest here, when I heard about The Marshall Mathers LP 2, I was more than a little concerned that these problems were going to get worse. I mean, I love The Marshall Mathers LP, the album is a goddamn classic, so why besmirch it by making an record that's probably guaranteed not to be a follow-up aligned with the original on a thematic level? That album's dark madness had a lot to say about Eminem's personal psychoses and his issues with fame, pop culture, women, and his audience - and I was willing to bet that Eminem, despite being a great rapper of superb technical skill, probably would not return to this well of influences. And coupled with the list of guest stars and my own natural skepticism, I was dreading this album's release and I expected the worst. Did I get it?
Ah, that video turned out nicely - Okay, fine, I'll delay the Celine Dion review to cover The Marshall Mathers LP 2, are you happy now? Goddamnit, kids these days...
Okay, time for another confession: I used to be a huge fan of Avril Lavigne. I'm serious. Her first album Let Go in 2002 is a great album and one that I really enjoy. In the past, I've made the comparison of my enjoyment of Avril Lavigne with everyone else's enjoyment of Taylor Swift: it's shallow music with some real songwriting talent behind it on occasion, but even when it's not, it can still kind of work for you. It definitely helped matters that Avril Lavigne had one big strength in her favour when it came to be a pop rock singer: she actually could convey more than one emotion. Sure, she could be bratty and obnoxious, but she also was expressive and could sound lovestruck or vulnerable or desperate and that gave her a ton of humanity that made her preferable to some real 'riot grrls'. And like with Taylor Swift, you could buy into the fact that her songs were written by someone her age. Was she ever the kind of feminist icon or a girl with a real punk edge? Well, no, but she wasn't trying to be. But then again, I wasn't surprised when she went in a darker direction with 2004's Under My Skin. It was darker, it was rougher, it was angrier... and it wasn't as good. Don't get me wrong, I still really like the album and 'My Happy Ending' and 'Complicated' are better songs than they have any right to be, but objectively it's not great. What it led to was a change in label and... Yeah, here's where the Avril Lavigne story takes a controversial turn because, well, she sold out. Now calm down, selling out isn't always a bad thing - you can still make good music after selling out and The Best Damn Thing had a few great songs on it. However, like with Taylor Swift's Red from earlier last year, there was a distinctive loss of personality and a definite shift towards the mainstream that didn't always favour her best elements. In particular, it was a distinctly less 'mature' album, as you could tell Avril was trying to play to a teen pop-punk audience who was, well, my age. But even at seventeen, I soured on 'Girlfriend' almost immediately because it cranked up the bratty obnoxiousness to eleven and had nothing in the instrumentation or lyrics to back it up. And really, those problems extended to her next album Goodbye Lullaby, and despite the fact that Avril wrote the majority of the material on that album, it definitely had a shift in focus to sullen, increasingly bland relationship songs that were a pale reflection of the material that she had done before. Avril herself admitted that it was more difficult to write these sorts of introspective songs, and considering most were directed at her ex-husband, I can kind of understand why. Regardless of that, it was also her weakest album and a sign that perhaps Avril Lavigne was running out of ideas. But now she's back this year with Chad Kroeger as a husband (ugh) and a self-titled album (five into her career... sigh). Could she recapture some of that spark she had from her early days?
Quite happy with this review, really think I articulated myself well- NO, I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE EMINEM ALBUM YET, DEAL WITH IT! Next up is Avril and Celine!
My name is Mark, I run the review show called Spectrum-Pulse... and I am a fan of Toby Keith. And here's one of the infuriating things about being a fan of country music - every time I say this, people raise an eyebrow and they mutter, 'Is he serious?' And you know what, I'm goddamn sick of that, because believe it or not, what most people think they know about this guy is mostly untrue or based upon a skewed vision of the guy's music, and if you asked them to name a Toby Keith song outside of 'Red Solo Cup' or 'Courtesy of the Red, White, And Blue', you'd get a series of blank expressions. Let's deal the elephant in the room first, shall we? First off, Toby Keith is not some hectoring Republican - he's always described himself as a Conservative democrat, a 'blue dog' if you will, and he's done a ton to support the troops, mostly because his father was an army veteran. When he wrote 'Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue' in the aftermath of 9/11 (a song that is lyrically clumsy, but not one I can hate because it's clear that it comes from a real, heartfelt place) and the death of his father, he actually refused to record a copy of it and only played it live. He only recorded a copy when he started to get a real emphatic reaction from his fans and the military at large - and then the whole Dixie Chicks feud happened and a lot of stupid was flung in both direction. For the record, though, Toby Keith is a better songwriter than the Dixie Chicks ever were, and he was actually the one who called off the feud, even if they were right in the end about Bush. See, here's the thing that most people don't know - Toby Keith has been in the country music scene for about twenty years. He started off in the early 90s and had a steady string of hits on the country charts until his mainstream breakthrough in the late 90s and early 2000s. Primarily, his singles have been light, upbeat, self-aggrandizing and kind of jokey, and it helps that he's a clever enough songwriter who's able to laugh at himself. What's contributed to his longevity, however, is his emotional range and his skill as a songwriter - believe it or not, Toby Keith has had a huge hand in writing his material, often being one of the only songwriters on his tracks, and his work has spanned legitimate love songs, borderline comedy tracks, and his more serious work. Yes, he's got a penchant for staying on the right side of the law and he's a huge supporter of the army, but the funny thing is that he's a good enough songwriter and sings with enough conviction to bypass political biases, and he's thrown support to both Republicans and Democrats. But Toby Keith is now 52, and while he's put out enough good-to-great albums to have the artistic clout he wants (it helps he runs his own small label under Universal), his voice has been added to the chorus of those who aren't all that pleased with the rise of bro-country. To quote directly, 'You hear the hip-hop thing start kicking in, and you start going, ‘Is that what we gotta do now to have a hit?’ I don’t know how to do that. Is that what I need every one of my songs to sound like now?…You start playing [deep songs] to a twenty-something audience, and it’s like, ‘Naw, man, there ain’t no mud on that tire. That ain’t about a Budweiser can. That ain’t about a chicken dancing out by the river. That ain’t about smoking a joint by the haystack. That’s about somebody dying and shit.’ Keep those thoughts in mind when you also consider that Toby Keith also had major writing credits on eleven of the thirteen songs on his newest album Drinks After Work. So you'd better bet I was intrigued, both as a fan of the guy and as someone who has kept a keen eye on the state of modern country - so, what did we get on Drinks After Work?
Well, that went quickly enough. Man, that album sucked. Next up is Toby Keith, followed by Avril and Celine - only then will I tackle Eminem (you can all wait). Stay tuned!
We're back to country again, folks, and this time, I'd like to ask a question of you all: have you ever wondered how certain acts break into the music industry? How they get that connection, how they manage to get those contacts, how they manage to line up that major label contract? Well, there are a wealth of answers - the lucky demo breakthrough, the start through songwriting which catapults into a performing career, the reality show start, and, of course, nepotism! It's particularly interesting in the country music scene how many acts can be linked by family to their success - and the funny thing is that I'm not the kind of guy who will immediately condemn these acts. As with reality show winners, you occasionally get sparks of talent flying from anywhere, and the succession in the Hank Williams family presents plenty of evidence that differing musical styles and talents can be developed regardless of bloodline. And besides, the music industry is an insular world - sometimes you need to break in however you can. That being said, I still have a healthy streak of skepticism and it ignited in a big way when I heard about Thomas Rhett. He's the son of Rhett Atkins, a mid-level country singer from the late-90s who had some serious critical acclaim and then joined a songwriting team with Dallas Davidson, one of the men responsible for some of the worst country songs of the past decade (fun fact: Dallas Davidson and Luke Bryan were roommates in college - shocker). So while it's clear his father is part of the Nashville songwriting machine that's been churning out bro-country this year, Thomas Rhett is actually the primary songwriter on the majority of this material (and he's 23, the same age as me). So to be honest, I was curious what sort of material Thomas Rhett would be looking to make with his major label debut. So, with that in mind, how did his new album It Goes Like This turn out?
Man, I imagine this won't go over well. Eh, it happens - I try to be as honest as possible. Next will probably be Thomas Rhett, then Toby Keith. Stay tuned!
The year was 2004, and indie rock was experiencing an unexpected and yet very welcome boom, courtesy of the success of acts like The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, and a collection of other strong singles and albums, all of which would have mixed to diminishing success throughout the rest of the decade. The band that left arguably the biggest mainstream cultural footprint would probably be The Killers, with the success of 'Mr. Brightside', 'Somebody Told Me', and 'All The Things That I Have Done' off of their great debut Hot Fuss, but the critical crosshairs were aimed at a very different band that also had their full-length debut that year, an album that would be widely acclaimed as one of the best of the decade. Yes, of course we're talking about Arcade Fire and their legendary debut Funeral (well, actually their debut was a self-titled EP a year earlier, but whatever). I have to be honest here, for the longest time I avoided getting into Arcade Fire because there were a number of traits about the Canadian indie rock band that really pissed me off. They had a degree of arrogant, humourless pretentiousness which got insufferable in large doses, both vocalists could get more than a little grating, and the lyrics didn't seem nearly as deep or resonant as they clearly thought they were. Coupled with Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne's disparaging comments on how little he liked Arcade Fire's attitude, it put me off from looking into the band for a long time. But when churning through my backlog, I decided to give the first three Arcade Fire albums a listen, and you know what? They're very good, possibly even great, and while I stand by all of my complaints, I do think the band has some real talents in composition and writing irresistibly catchy melodies with a wide variety of instruments. And say what you will about their lyrics - hit and miss though they are - they do have a fair amount of nuance in approaching big ideas which I can definitely appreciate. Funeral did a shockingly good job dissecting how human beings deal with death, and managed not to get bogged down in the bleakness of it all - I can definitely see why it is critically adored to this day. Neon Bible opted for the 'dark sophomore album' route and while it was significantly messier, it did a decent enough job - although the tonal dissonance between the lyrics and the instrumentation occasionally got very questionable. The Suburbs was perhaps Arcade Fire's simplest album in terms of instrumentation and melodies, but it paid huge dividends in a surprisingly nuanced portrayal of suburban life and problems that called to mind the roots rock and Americana of the mid-70s - and on top of that, you could buy into the fact that the sentiments driving the album came from a very real place (in other words, it should be no surprise The Suburbs is probably my favourite Arcade Fire album). So with that, I was a little encouraged going into their new album Reflektor, even despite the mixed critical opinions. How did it turn out?
Well, this came together quickly - mostly because there's so little to say about this album as a whole. Next is probably Reflektor by Arcade Fire, because I've been preparing that particular diatribe for some time. Stay tuned!
I have no goddamn clue why I'm reviewing this album. I mean, a remix album comprised of almost entirely songs from a record I thought barely scraped the ceiling of mediocre by a band that has completely run out of ideas? Really, I can't think of a greater waste of time other than review the new Christmas album by Kelly Clarkson (which isn't happening, by the way, so don't hold your breath)! First, a bit of context. Last year, when my reviews were previously confined to my blog, I reviewed Linkin Park's Living Things, and suffice to say, I didn't like it. And while upon reexamination I don't think my review is particularly well-written (it's a little too overwrought and overloaded with lecturing), I stand by my opinions surrounding Linkin Park and the album in particular. The album was poorly written, it lacked instrumental heft and weight, it was an unwelcome return to the concepts of their earlier work that haven't aged well and a distinct step down from the high-minded ambitions of A Thousand Suns, and worst of all, it was boring as tar. Yeah, 'Powerless' was a good song, but outside of that a year later, I can barely remember the album and that's never a good sign. I mean, I remember fragments of 'Burn It Down' and I remember thinking that it was mediocre at best, a far cry from the grit and energy that occasionally made some of the band's earlier material worth a listen. So maybe I shouldn't have been surprised that the album was getting the remix treatment, almost doubling the original album in length courtesy of guest DJs and rap verses. And as much as I'd like to be snide and point out that it apparently requires more hands in the mix to make Linkin Park vaguely sellable, I wasn't exactly set to condemn this album. After all, the remixes could add some layer of unique personality to pierce through the boredom I had with the original record, and who knows, maybe Pusha T might be able to deliver a better rap verse than he did on Kay's debut. So with that in mind, how does Recharged by Linkin Park turn out?
Yeah, this album really got to me - but in the good kind of way, so I'm not complaining in the slightest. Seriously though, check it out - it's awesome. With that in mind, it looks like this week'll be busy enough, with Toby Keith, Thomas Rhett, and Arcade Fire dropping albums before the end of the month (and somebody decided Linkin Park needed a remix album... ugh). Then it's Battle of the Canadian girls as Avril and Celine square off at the beginning of November. Stay tuned!
It is one of the most ambitious and fascinating projects ever undertaken in metal - hell, some could make the argument that it's one of the biggest in music as a whole. The brainchild of a genius singer-songwriter multi-instrumentalist with a love of prog rock, psychedelia, and science fiction. A project that has spanned dozens of metal acts, big and small. For me, it has been the introduction point to so many bands to which I've consequently discovered and loved, and the fact that something coherent and engaging could have been made from it is mind-boggling. Yes, folks, I'm talking about Ayreon, the multi-album megaproject masterminded by Arjen Lucassen. Started in 1995 with The Final Experiment, the Ayreon 'story' spanned seven albums, all of them which are good and a few are goddamn classics. In that respect, it's a little hard for me to be heavily critical of this project, partially because it played such a huge role in my discovery of progressive metal and partially because it's so goddamn great. I guess if I was going to try here, Arjen Lucassen's closest analogue in another field would be Kenneth Branagh, in that both men are fiendishly ambitious, produce highly cerebral material that can toe the line between epic and camp, and that they both have unbelievable clout in their ability to recruit players from all across their field. You want a short list of bands from where Lucassen has called up performers? How about After Forever, Blind Guardian, Dream Theater, Avantasia, Epica, Kamelot, Nightwish, Gotthard, Iron Maiden, Lacuna Coil, Rhapsody of Fire, Within Temptation, The Flower Kings, Yes, King Crimson, and even Genesis! And really, I left a whole slew of acts off the list - that's how much clout Lucassen has, and it's kind of incredible how he can call up so many different prog and metal performers to work with him time and time again. But for those of you who don't know, the Ayreon project had its concluding element with 01011001 (the binary term for Y) in 2008, with Lucassen finally setting it aside to go onto other projects, like the follow-up Star One album and the fascinating experimentation of Guilt Machine. Yet, this year, he announced he was calling together a whole new crop of musicians to come work with him on an album titled The Theory of Everything. And as an Ayreon fan and a physics grad, I was more than intrigued by what Lucassen would be able to create from his insane vision and fetish for weird science. Joking aside, this has been my most highly anticipated album of the year thus far. So, did he pull off another classic?
I dunno about this review - I mean, I stand by it, but it took me longer than I'd like to make and I'm not sure I'm entirely pleased with it. Eh, it happens. In any case, next up will probably be Ayreon, because my review of The Neighborhood is taking a sour turn to say the least. Hopefully a release from one of my favourite acts will cheer me up...
As those of you who have been following this series for a while probably know, I'm Canadian - and what you probably don't know is that Canadian radio and charts are a little bit different than the charts you find in the States. First is that outside of a few acts, hip-hop doesn't really have a huge amount of groundswell on Canadian charts - sure, we get the big names, but not a huge amount outside of that. Secondly, outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan, we didn't normally use to get a lot of country music either - which changed this year, thanks to the heavy mainstream push with regards to country music, with heavily mixed results. Thirdly, and most importantly, we have something called the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission, otherwise known as the CRTC. This government-backed commission is responsible for making sure Canadian content has a chance on our radio in the face of American competition. So in other words, Americans, if you thought you were sick of Nickelback and Justin Bieber - well, you haven't heard anything yet. But if I'm being honest, I actually support the CRTC regulations a fair bit, mostly because there's a ton of great Canadian content that most people south of the border will never hear thanks to the overwhelming amount of American material. And the fact that bands like Metric and Marianas Trench can occasionally land some chart success here not only means rock didn't really go away up here, but that the charts maintained some of that genre diversity that can get lost on the American Hot 100. Our charts are probably a little bit closer to the British charts, in that we tend to have a bit more international crossover with upcoming trends and we get more chart oddballs (although most of ours have a distinctly Canadian bent). So with that in mind, I think I have something of a duty to cover at least some Canadian content that passes by me, so let's talk about the debut album from Kay. She's a pop/hip-hop singer who initially got some viral buzz back in 2011, and a little more success courtesy of a collaboration with Pusha T last year. She's had some difficulty getting a breakthrough hit, but hey, she got picked up by Universal so she must be doing something right. So, with that in mind, how does her debut album My Name Is Kay turn out?
So glad I could finally get this out. Took a lot of work to get to this point, but I'm really happy this worked as well as it did. Still holds my record for the biggest nitpick I've ever indulged in. Next up... god, I've got no clue. Hopefully it'll be Ayreon, although I might save that for the weekend. Maybe some retrospectives, we'll see. Stay tuned!
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