The Skip-pile
When I started with the whole review thing, my goal was to only review things I liked, and just ignore the bad stuff. I broke my own rule when I felt I had to warn everyone about the insanely bad Weezer record, so I'm giving birth to the Skip Pile, which is a pile of albums I'd advise you to skip and/or give a wide berth.
Adding to this pile today:
Porcupine Tree - Lightbulb sun
One thing about listening to music while playing World of Warcraft is that it usually takes you half an hour to realize you've been listening to the same album for three times in a row already. So basically, you will notice when a really good song comes along, mediocre songs just pass by unnoticed. In other words, it has got to be a really sucky album when you actually pick up on how bad it is sucking, and you decide to alt-tab out of the game just to switch cd's. This is one of those albums. I think these guys played the Werchter festival last summer, and it was on that basis that I decided to check it out, but this was horribly bad and boring.
Laura Marling - I speak because I can
Part of the London-based folk-scene and the partner of the singer in Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling is an acoustic singer-songwriter. I myself, have to admit I'm not the biggest fan of the genre (I only have a limited tolerance towards the Duyster program, after which I will stop listening and blast some Slayer or Metallica instead), and I'll admit "Rambling man" (the third UK single from the album) is actually quite good (it incidentally is musically very similar to Mumford and uses the same songwriting techniques), but all the rest is highly skippable.
Reviews
Best Coast - Crazy for you (8/10)
Best Coast is a fairly recent band from California. They recruited the drummer from Vivian Girls, there's a long-haired spastic Asian dude on guitar and then there's Bethany Cosentino. Lover of cats (she has her ginger cat's name Snacks tattooed on her arm), weed, Snookie (from Jersey Shore fame), hater of Katy Perry. This is their debut album, although they've released a lot of singles and EP's in their short existence. I'm a big fan, they remind of The Raveonettes in their 'Chain gang of love'-period, when they also sounded light, sunny, not too fuzzy and had short tracks. At 12 tracks, this album clocks in under half an hour, which is a good thing, because the songs always are done way before they would start to bore. Not the best lyrical record you'll ever hear, but the emotions come across and you can feel the honesty ("You say that we're just friends/but I want this 'till the end"). There's some influences from sixties girl groups, and expect a lot of woo-hoo background vocals. The more up-tempo tracks are like always my personal favourite (see below), but the slower tracks usually have some kind of twist that keeps them interesting. Recommended background music for daydreaming about love or the summer.
Pavement - Quarantine the past (8.5/10)
A year and a half ago, I listened to the Wowee Zowee album by the same band. It was the first full album I ever checked out by this cultband (categorised as lo-fi alternative indie rock) from the nineties. I liked it but at the same time couldn't really get into it, because the album is abrasive at times, there's a lot of different styles, and Pavement were never the band to make it easy on their listeners. This best-of compilation came out to celebrate their reunion shows last year, and it's a lot more coherent that the respective albums the tracks come from. People will always complain that some particular songs are lacking, but this is a good overview, ranging from forgotten singles ("Gold soundz") to excellent album tracks (the slightly post-rockish "Grounded"), with a lot of variation. Makes me wonder if contemporary teenagers would still dig this, or if it's really a "you had to be there in the nineties"-kind of thing. It is only now that I got the lyrical brilliance of the "You're my fact-checking cous"-line in "Stereo" too.
Hairglow - S/T (8/10)
Hooverphonic was one of the most succesful Belgian bands in the late nineties and noughties, if you look from an international perspective. After the departure of their singer Geike (as far as I know, they're still looking for a new one), main man Alex Callier emerged with this poppy, eighties synthpop project, with Alex himself on vocals. I'm risking all my credibility as a music reviewer by rating this with an 8, because this album was gruesomely ignored by the whole media and overlooked by the audience. I picked it up for 2 euros expecting little more than a couple of good laughs, but it has promoted itself to endless repeat-status. Part of the appeal is the confusion whether this album is a tribute to or a pastiche of the genre. The production is excellent and really evokes the eighties sound, whereas the lyrics are as silly as their eighties counterparts. A couple of examples "Your solitude doesn't like intruders/Asking for your name", "They're something inside me/it wants to get out/it wants to love you" and "You are not a robot dear/You are made of premium flesh and blood". Top tracks are "Is it love?", "I do love you" (both of which are unfortunately not on youtube), and "A12", which features a singer that - oddly enough - sounds exactly like Geike.
Helmet - Monochrome (6.5/10)
Helmet is an alternative metal/rock band from the nineties with a distinctive sound, mixing groovy guitars with a lot of their typical start-stop riffs. Unlike others, I still liked their "Aftertaste" album, but like most fans, I prefer the earlier "Meantime" and "Betty" albums. They split up for a while after "Aftertaste", had their fair share of line-up changes, and returned somewhere in the mid-2000's with the "Size Matters", which I haven't heard. "Monochrome" is the successor to that album. Page Hamilton succeeds in reviving the old Helmet sound in a couple of tracks (well, the riff "Brand New" is a straight copy from the one in "Turned out" on the "Meantime"-album), so if you're a Helmet fan and you have the chance to pick this up for 2 euro's like I did, do not hesitate. Great intro line too, "Hanging out with all these dicks/still collecting tokens", Hamilton sneers on "Swallowing everything".
Dubstep
This genre has existed since the beginning of the millennium, but it has swiftly outgrown the underground since the beginning of the year (and probably before) and is even hitting the charts now. For a genre derived from grime and drum and bass, it first struck me as kind of slow, but then I realized that it's the jumpiness of the melody that creates the danceability. Let's see of this genre is a keeper, or if it will gracelessly will fade from popularity as fast as the late tectonic genre. The 2 biggest hits in this scene right now are:
Random tracks
While we're still on the subject of danceable stuff, I've been liking this radio track with the jungle-like sounds for the past couple of weeks.
Manic Street Preachers have got a new album out, and first single is - slightly dramatically - titled "It's not war, just the end of love". I'll let you decide if the guitar in the verse sounds more like "A design for life" or "Tonight, tonight".
The Wombats were one of the more fun bands from the last couple of years, they too are back with a new album, the new single however lacks a little energy, even though it has lines like "Astrophysics, you'll never be my closest friend" and "I wear a suitcase under each of my eyes".
Since the second album by MGMT was deemed terribly boring by pretty much everyone, the niche for psychedelic retro music in the rock spectrum was now again vacant. The new darlings of the music press is Australian band Tame Impala, and I'll admit this track sounds like it should and is catchy.
Title Fight
When 2 of our friends are wearing merch from the same band on the same day, you know you finally have to check out that other band you've been sleeping on. Title Fight is a poppunk/melodic hardcore band from Kingston, Pennsylvania, and combine the vocal intensity of the early The Get Up Kids with the fast poppunk of early Saves The Day and the whole early 2000's Drive-Thru records scene, or at least that's what I'm hearing. I checked out 2 tracks (both from the "Last thing you forget"-album) that were both excellent, checking out their albums is now a lot higher on my priority list.
