This Is No Way for Me to Find Out What “Tenderoni” Means

Not being an NME subscriber, I miss a lot of the minutiae of the British music scene (for instance, I don’t keep up with Pete Doherty’s arrests). And some of the bigger stuff. I didn’t know Bloc Party declared an indefinite hiatus shortly after Intimacy came out and I didn’t know until earlier this year that Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke had recorded a solo album, called The Boxer. Also, he came out of the closet somewhere in there. So he’s been a busy dude since Bloc Party’s hiatus – so busy, in fact, that he worked his last name right off and had to release The Boxer under the much simpler moniker “Kele.”

I can’t mince words, though: The Boxer is a fucking mess and it’s a massive leap away from the substance that made Bloc Party’s best work (Silent Alarm) so memorable. Okereke – ahem, Kele – is an amazing singer. Honestly, his vocal abilities are without peer in modern rock. So you can imagine how perplexing it is to hear Kele bury his voice under some of the most annoying vocal effects I’ve heard this side of a Cher album.

I get that Kele wanted to make more of dance record with The Boxer, and I suppose some of this stuff will work well for kids who like to do Ecstasy and lick each other (let the record show that I have no problem with that – just remember to hydrate, kids.) but rest of us might be in out of the cold on this one. Apparently, Kele fell in love with a sample of a phone operator saying, “Please hang up and try again” because he forces it into two songs (“On the Lam” and “The New Rules”, the latter of which might be okay if it weren’t for that pointless sample. “On the Lam”, however, is just awful) and drives me to distraction both times. Samples work when they enhance a song, not when they send you screaming for the “skip” button.

Bloc Party’s stuff always seemed plenty dancey to me, or dancey enough anyway, but it had a certain amount of substance that The Boxer lacks. There are lyrics on this album that would make your emo kid brother cringe, when he could make them out over the schizophrenic beats and overused vocal effects.  ”Everything You Wanted” could out-trite Incubus, and I don’t even mean mildly-palatable early Incubus. I mean “Anna Molly” Incubus (and hey, it’s honestly okay with me if you like Incubus. But even their staunchest defender cannot make any kind of case for “Anna Molly” being anywhere near clever) and the sad thing is that “Everything You Wanted” is still one of the more melodically enjoyable tracks on the album. Kele can still craft a fine melody, but he buries every single one of them on The Boxer under repeated effects. The result makes me think maybe the former Mr. Okereke isn’t confident that he’ll get to make another solo record so he’s putting every musical idea he’s got left into these ten tracks. As previously mentioned, “On the Lam” is one of the worst offenders of the lot, disguising Kele’s voice to the point that he sounds like a female robot (but not as awesome as the one who serenades you at the end of Portal).

I don’t know if Kele made a deliberate step away from substantive songwriting (this is the guy who gave us “Helicopter” and “Price of Gas”, remember?) for his solo debut, but it sure feels like it to me. And I have a hard time imagining a fan who is gonna hear this and go, “Oh, thank God he’s stopped talking about stuff that matters.” And I don’t mean that every song has to be about war or famine or whatever, but there was a time when “Kele” was Kele Okereke and his music matched the emotional urgency of his lyrics. The Boxer has its tender moments, but they sound film-soundtracky – for the next Bridget Jones movie perhaps – and overproduced.

And then there’s “Tenderoni.” Google that shit if you don’t know what it means. Depending on where you click, you’ll discover that the word is slang for either a sexy underage girl/guy that you know you shouldn’t mess with or just your younger lover. By either definition, it’s entirely possible that several of Shakespeare’s sonnets were aimed squarely at his tenderoni. Kele’s song didn’t impress me much (I think he recycled the melody from an Intimacy track, but I’m too lazy to look up which one) to begin with and then it got to the spelling/singing thing at the end. I don’t know if I’m the only person who feels this way, but any time there’s spelling in a song, that song automatically loses fifty awesome points. Even if my beloved Hold Steady wrote a song that featured a word spelled out in it, I would like it less for the spelling. If you’re interested, the worst case of spelling-in-song that has yet occurred was Fergie’s “Fergilicious”, wherein Fergie actually commits to record the fact that she can’t spell “tasty” (she spells it with an “e” in it. You have all that money and all those people around you and nobody can spellcheck your lyrics?). Getting back to “Tenderoni,” I will say that Kele does a good job of creating a narrator who wants to be both father figure and lover to some lucky kid. I guess that’s good, so long as the song is more cautionary tale than autobiography.

At the end of the day, the nicest thing I can say about The Boxer is that it makes me want to listen to two far superior albums. The first is Bloc Party’s debut, Silent Alarm. That album had substance and musical chops to spare (and real drumming! Yay real drums!) and was catchy from start to finish. The second album is Hot Chip’s One Life Stand, which is a great dance-pop record from people who wield their computers and vocal effects with more nuance and skill than Kele has managed to muster for his solo debut.

Send In the Clowns

Sigh. I read the Pitchfork review of the new Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach, long before I actually got the album. There were lots of red flags. The review opened with, “Forget the cartoon characters.” I thought, “Wait a minute. I like the cartoon characters.” And then there was, most damningly, “Joke’s over, Gorillaz are real.”

First off, I need to take issue with the assertion that Gorillaz are suddenly real because of Plastic Beach, their mostly boring, stylistically static new album. How were they not real when Del the Funky Homosapien was spitting the freshest rhymes of his life over Dan the Automator’s beats? How was “Punk”* not real? How was “Slow Country” anything less than real and, I might loudly add, fucking beautiful? I’ll grant that Demon Days felt a little uninspired, but we got a couple of shit-hot singles out of it (“Feel Good, Inc.” is 100% certified ass-shaking music. You can’t not shake your ass to that song) and they certainly deserve to be called “real.” And, for as disjointed and weird as that album was, it certainly didn’t feel as overlong and excessive as Plastic Beach.

I realized, about halfway through Snoop Dogg’s trite, uber-laconic guest spot on “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach”, that the first Gorillaz album (one of the not-real ones, according to Pitchfork) is the only one that I still listen to from start to finish, largely because I love – love – the fact that it is a wildly inconsistent mishmash of pop, rock, and hip-hop that is, for whatever its faults, one helluva fun album. I don’t care if the P-forkers doubt its seriousness. Pitchfork has never done much to convince me that they can tolerate “fun” or “joy” (they’re big Morrissey fans over there, you know) so it stands to reason that they would laud Damon Albarn’s most uniformly sad-sack effort since The Good, the Bad, and the Queen (an album that I actually like because it had strong, if depressing, melodies and wasn’t fucked up by the likes of Snoop Dogg**). The first Gorillaz album is like Saint’s Row 2 – it knows what it is, it doesn’t give a fuck, and it’s here to party. By way of contrast, Plastic Beach is like Animal Crossing, a game where anthropomorphic woodland creatures strive to pay off their fucking mortgages and, presumably, not douse themselves in gasoline and strike a match. The game is exactly as much fun as it sounds, and it might still be more fun than Plastic Beach.

Plastic Beach is ostensibly a “concept” album (I hate that phrase and I’m really sorry I used it) about, I think, environmental destruction. Maybe. See, the attempt at cohesion is something that does not really fit the Gorillaz milieu. It’s better left to bands like the Decemberists or my beloved Hold Steady, whose Separation Sunday is the perfect balance of storytelling and ass-kicking rock ‘n’ roll. While Pitchfork’s Sean Fennessey may deride the “unfocused” nature of the first two Gorillaz records, I celebrate it; they sounded like they were 1) doing what they wanted and 2) not taking themselves too seriously. Plastic Beach suffers under the weight of its own weariness. Even the upbeat numbers like lead single “Stylo” do little to alleviate the boredom (good video though). Even De La Soul, who propelled “Feel Good, Inc.” right down my dopamine reward pathway, fail to save the album. In fact, their contribution, called “Superfast Jellyfish”, is actually downright retarded (don’t get mad – I’m only using that word because I know it pisses off Sarah Palin, which has become a sort of lifelong goal of mine. Anyone who thinks they’re helping so-called “special needs” kids by getting mad over language should be hit in the face with a shovel. Try supporting science. Try making sure that non-rich people can afford to hire the assistants their kids might need. Try actually caring about another human being besides yourself, you shallow, retarded cunt. Rant over. For now).

Mr. Fennessey is right that the rap numbers on Plastic Beach are the worst parts, but he overstates the beauty of the rest of it. There’s nothing on Plastic Beach that tops Blur’s “Tender” in the beauty department, although “On Melancholy Hill” is a good song – perhaps the only really good one on the album.

And there’s the real rub – the disparate nature of the previous Gorillaz albums was easy to forgive because, especially on the first one, you got the feeling that you were listening to a very adept mix tape. The songs, though they didn’t necessarily fit together, were great songs. Plastic Beach feels like an attempt to Make a Statement, whether it’s musical or political or whatever, and it falls flat to my ears because of it. Pitchfork may like their music with heaping spoonful of gravitas (I do too, depending on the artist. Johnny Cash’s later works bore the weight of his years, which is partly why his cover of “I See a Darkness” is actually superior to the already-gorgeous original. But he didn’t start out as a cartoon band either), but perhaps they’d do well to go back and listen to the Ramones –

Hold on. We’d all do well to go back and listen to the Ramones. Take two minutes and do that right now.

Feel better? I know I do. Anyway, the Pitchfork people might wanna check out the Ramones and the first Gorillaz album and ask themselves if they would’ve enjoyed a Ramones album of long jams about the spotted owl. Chances are, no one would enjoy that because that’s not what the Ramones did well. And, judging by Plastic Beach, cohesion and weary seriousness are not what Gorillaz do well.

*My assertion that “Punk” is the best Gorillaz song will probably be met with laughter and scorn, but I can bear it. “Punk” is the best Gorillaz song.

**To be fair, Snoop Dogg is only on one song on Plastic Beach and I don’t want to give the impression that he is solely responsible for its bloated, preposterous shittiness. But it’s telling to me that Gorillaz used to have guest spots from MF Doom and Del the Funky Homosapien and now they’re kicking it with Snoop Dogg. A Ghostface or RZA cameo would’ve been much more welcome to my ears.

Why I Don’t Hate Vampire Weekend

I don’t believe Americans invented the ill-informed, knee-jerk reaction, but I know we’ve perfected it. Ask yourself if people who have the time to go to D.C. for a week and wave (often misspelled) signs are actually working enough to make enough money to be “Taxed Enough Already.” Just a for-instance. Politics is an easy field to which I can point and say, “Behold, y’all: ignorance abounds.” But fans of music are not immune, as I have found out on more than one occasion. Sometimes, if you don’t like a band that other people like, they’ll hate you for it. I don’t understand this myself, but it happens. And sometimes music fans like to react to things before they’ve heard them. I didn’t want to write too much about how people hate Vampire Weekend for their Ivy-League pedigree, their elitist references to “kefir” (goes good with arugala, Tea Partiers), or their globe-trotting sound because every Vampire Weekend review discusses that shit ad nauseum. But every review discusses that shit because there are more than a few people whose knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss Vampire Weekend as privileged posers, allowing their perception of the band as people to color their perception of the band as musicians. (It should be noted that plenty of great musicians are/were horrible people. Ask John Lennon’s kids what kind of father he was. Ask Joey Ramone what kind of friend Johnny Ramone was*. And so on.)

But here’s the thing: I didn’t want to like Vampire Weekend at first either. I felt snob-guilt for liking “A-Punk,” which I heard for the first time (gasp!) on a non-NPR-affiliated radio station. And I still listen to their first album and it’s still fun and interesting. And I wanted to cut myself off there and resist the urge to purchase Contra on the day it came out (I did read an NPR review of the album before I bought it. Cred restored? I don’t care). But who was I kidding?

I just can’t quit Vampire Weekend, to borrow a phrase from a vastly overrated film. The reason I can’t is because Vampire Weekend makes very – very - compelling pop music. That is due in no small part to the arranging abilities of a multi-instrumentalist whom I affectionately nicknamed Batman when discussing their first album. Batman punctuates Vampire Weekend’s hyper pop music with flourishes of wind and string instruments, while Ezra Koenig yelps his sometimes-clever lyrics (he’s no Isaac Brock, but he scores his share of points) and strums his usually-clean guitar. Their sound is not like the sound of other popular acts and I believe they come by their world-music inclinations honestly. So I like them and I like Contra and if you write a review where you say it’s the worst piece of shit you’ve ever heard, I promise I won’t post comments on your blog telling you to shoot yourself or trying to simultaneously abuse you and the English language. The reason I won’t do that is simple: I’m a fucking adult (looking at you -but certainly not all of you – fans of Portugal. The Man).

But enough peripheral bullshit. Let’s talk about Contra, can we? The songs are not drastically different from the songs on Vampire Weekend’s eponymous debut – which is to say, the songs are good. There are one or two slower, more ballady numbers, and Auto-tune rears its ugly head on “California English”, much to my dismay. While I understand the aesthetic choice and there is compelling evidence that Ezra Koenig doesn’t need Auto-tune, I cannot state clearly enough that I loathe Auto-tune at all times under all circumstances. I think it sounds like shit. If Joe Strummer came back to life and told me that Auto-tune cures cancer, AIDS, poverty, and stupidity all at the same time, I would counter that it still sounds like shit and has no fucking business in my music. Ever. Also, Kanye West used Auto-tune on his entire last album and he doesn’t seem to be less stupid from where I sit. My gripe about the Auto-tune is smaller than it sounds, though – it (just barely) doesn’t ruin “California English” and certainly doesn’t ruin the rest of the album. Contra is similar to Vampire Weekend, but Contra is musically smarter. This is analogous to how I feel being newly 30 – it’s like being 20 again, but I’m smarter. I hope.

The only real question I have for Vampire Weekend is, can they pull this music off live? I might have to see them at Coachella to find out, but it looks like I’m headed back there this year, so that won’t be a problem. It doesn’t sound to me like Koenig sings anything particularly challenging for his vocal range, so what I’ll be looking for his how they pull off all of the nifty little instrumental flourishes. I predict heavy sequencing.

The bottom line is, if you liked the first Vampire Weekend record, Contra will probably also please you. If you didn’t like their debut, you’re probably not going to find much to change your mind here. If you don’t like Vampire Weekend because of where they’re from or what college they attended, or how “privileged”** you think they are, I think you’re cheating yourself out of some great pop music, but that’s your business.

*A bit of explanation for those of you who have, for some reason, not seen The End of the Century: Johnny’s wife was, at one time Joey Ramone’s girlfriend. Johnny Ramone wooed her away from Joey who, by way of passive aggressive vengeance, wrote “The KKK Took My Baby Away”, ostensibly about his guitarist Johnny. I honestly don’t know how the Ramones stayed together as long as they did, given how little they seemed to like each other.

**Anybody who gets to make music for a living is privileged, as is anyone who can go to the occasional (or frequent) concert. If you have time to troll the internet to defend the bands you love and dis the bands you hate, you are also privileged. To my knowledge, the dudes in Vampire Weekend are not the sons of cable TV moguls or oil barons or former pop stars. Even if the guys in Vampire Weekend were born rich, it makes no sense to hate them for it. They clearly used their privilege to hone what is, all else aside, remarkable musical talent. On the other hand, it does make sense to hate Paris Hilton because she’s famous for being born rich and has used her privilege to simultaneously attract new and exotic STDs, launch an abortive acting career, and launch an even more abortive (if possible) musical “career.”

The Worst of 2009

Well, I’m back after a restful week in Seattle and it seems to be that wonderful time of the year when everyone arbitrarily quantifies all their favorite whatevers – I’m not immune to such behavior. But before I tell you what I thought was so great about 2009, I wish to – in the interest of balance, of course – point out the very worst that 2009 had to offer. I’m limiting this to music because, if you expand the Worst of 2009 list to, say, news stories, you can get depressed fast. I should hope the image of a vomiting clown suggests we’re here to have a good time.  So, without further et cetera:

Worst song of 2009: “Desolation Row” (Bob Dylan cover) by My Chemical Romance. Now, I didn’t like the new Bob Dylan album. I do, however, enjoy much of his early work. It just so happens that “Desolation Row,” from Highway 61 Revisited, is my very favorite Bob Dylan tune. Of all time. When I heard that My Chemical Blowmance was going to cover the song for the Watchmen soundtrack, I knew it was going to be bad. I just had no idea how bad. This band truly pioneers shittyness. Fortunately, My Chemical Toilet didn’t bother to cover all 11 minutes of the original. Still, they put together a painfully awful three minutes. I was doing pretty well at ignoring MCR’s evil up to this point. But now, I want them destroyed. Fuck this band.

Worst album of 2009: Scream by Chris Cornell. I should think this is unsurprising to Bollocks! readers. Scream was a perfect storm of really bad ideas (Timbalind producing a dance-pop record by a grunge icon? I thought there were laws against shit like this) and, somehow, the whole manages to be far worse than the sum of its parts. Cornell has been slipping since Soundgarden broke up (I know, that’s putting it mildly), but Scream was the point where I completely lost my faith in the man. With dull, misogynist hooks like “No, that bitch ain’t a part of me,” and vocal performances that could charitably be described as “lackluster”, Scream is terrible enough to be a dark horse candidate for worst album of the decade.

Worst person of 2009: Chris Brown. Oh, I know. He apologized and he wants our forgiveness and wants us to buy his terrible new album, but I don’t feel like letting him off the hook just yet and here’s why: I was able look the other way while Brown became an inexplicably famous adolescent pop star with a swimming pool full of money and a stunning girlfriend. It happens all the time in this country and I don’t begrudge Brown his success, up to the point where, in a sports car that costs more than I make in a year, he smacked around said stunning girlfriend. You don’t get to be an inexplicably famous pop star and an abusive cocksucker, Chris Brown. Fuck you. If you want my forgiveness, here’s what you can do: purchase a Yugo, four bottles of Old English, drive out somewhere in the hills, drink the malt liquor, and then beat the shit out of yourself. You do that, and I’ll run out and buy your shitty new record. I promise.

Worst Live Act of 2009: Ghostland Observatory. I saw these assholes open for the Flaming Lips. They looked like a Ren Fair crashed into a Star Trek convention and sounded like a sack of kittens and a laptop in an industrial-sized blender. At first, I thought this was some kind of Andy Kaufman thing where they were fucking with my perception of what a “good” band should be. But then I realized that no, they’re just no-talent ass-clowns with a pretty good light show.

Most Pathetic Comeback of 2009: Creed. Hey, even Jesus hates these guys. And his word is Gospel.

Worst New Band of 2009 (and Possibly of All Time): Wavves. I guess they’re not technically “new,” because they put something out last year too. But I just wanted to take another opportunity to point out that Wavves is a god-fucking-awful band. How awful? I shit you not, I’d rather listen to My Chemical Blowmance’s Black Parade album at top volume while Gerard Way bad-touches me and reads aloud from the My Chemical Romance Saved My Life Site than listen to Wavves even one more time. If I’ve already doled out a “Fuck this band” to Way’s MCR, I reserve the (much more severe) Triple Dog-Fuck This Band for Wavves. No… Quadruple Dog-Fuck This Band.

Worst Record Label: EMI. And Sextuple Dog-Fuck EMI for not putting out Dark Night of the Soul. It’s ironic to me that labels often assume you would buy an album that you downloaded if you couldn’t get it for free. This is definitely not always the case. But, with Dark Night of the Soul, EMI is putting me in the position of having to steal an album for which I would gladly have paid. Way to keep the kids from getting what they want, EMI.

That’s about the worst stuff I can think of for this year. Later this week (starting tomorrowish – we don’t have hard and fast schedules here at Bollocks!), I’ll tell you some of my favorite songs of the year and 13 of my favorite albums.

See Mystery Lights and Orgy Taxonomists

Ah, Oregon. Land from whence I came, land to which I’ll one day return. Land now known for LeGarrette Blount punchin’ a dude at the Boise State game. Oregon really is a lot classier than that, I promise (Bob Packwood, Tonya Harding, Everclear, the Oregon Citizens Alliance, and Bill Sizemore notwithstanding). Bruce Campbell has a summer home there! Also, there’s great music in the Beaver State  (I’ve mentioned this before) and I’m apparently not the only one who thinks so. James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem. At the risk of sounding like a hipster, you really should listen to LCD Soundsystem. At least give “Daft Punk is Playing at My House”, “North American Scum,” and “All My Friends” a chance. Oh, and “Disco Infiltrator”, “The Great Release,” and “Get Innocuous.” Oh hell, just get both their albums. It’s only 18 tracks.) apparently dug YACHT’s “Summer Song” (they recorded it as an homage to his LCD-ness) so much that he signed them right up to his DFA label. He can do that because he’s James Murphy. Who the fuck are you?

The reason I mention LCD Soundsystem a lot on this here blog of mine is because they do something almost no one I can think of does: they make electronic music that doesn’t send me flying into a homicidal rage. In fact, they make electronic music that kicks ass. That has to be a fluke, right? (No, because Massive Attack and The Beta Band also used to do it.)

Apparently not (I don’t pay attention to my own excessive parenthetical statements). You see, this YACHT album, See Mystery Lights, is pretty great. And it’s definitely of the electronic persuasion. I definitely begrudge them the all-caps name (although maybe I shouldn’t; DOOM does this and his music is unbelievably rad. Your favorite rapper probably doesn’t sample Bukowski poems) and “I’m in Love with a Ripper” is kind of a big turd of a song (not everyone will agree with me there, but the annoying vocal effects are too much for my limited electronic tastes), but the rest of the album ranges from good to fucking awesome, and it starts firmly in the latter category with “Ring the Bell” and “The Afterlife,” two songs that ought to be on the playlist at the hedonistic orgy (is there some other kind of orgy?) that I expect to follow my funeral (if any of you out there live longer than I do, and someone probably will, you must know that any worthy celebration of my life will require epic quantities of  the following:  great beer, great music, and great sex. Probably also video games and swears).

YACHT is pretty much Astoria-born Jona Bechtolt who, in addition to making great music, joins The Goonies as one of only two culturally relevant things to ever emerge from Astoria (their high school mascot is, I shit you not, is the Fighting Fisherman. I’m pretty sure my first alcoholic step-dad could have run onto the field at any given game and been mistaken for this mascot). Bechtolt’s partner in crime on See Mystery Lights is Claire L. Evans, who delivers great vocal turns on “The Afterlife” and “Psychic City,” the catchiest song I’ve heard in a long-ass time. The rest of the band might well be a drum-machine and a laptop. You might think I’m dissing YACHT here, but I’m really not; they do a lot with their lappy & drumputer. A lot more than a lot of really shitty bands out there.

See Mystery Lights is far from perfect; it’s really only 8 tracks with two alternate takes of other songs stuck on the end (the “party mix” of “I’m in Love with a Ripper” is actually superior to the original version, in my opinion. But just barely), which makes it as long as Modest Mouse’s dead-awesome No One’s First and You’re Next EP. That, however, is about par for the course on DFA – LCD Soundsystem has yet to release an album longer than nine tracks. See Mystery Lights has one other minor flaw: “It’s Boring/You Can Live Anywhere You Want” is about three minutes too long. I forgive YACHT for this, however, because it’s still pretty awesome (especially the “It’s Boring” part). And the gems on See Mystery Lights outweigh its flaws by one million shiny tons.  This style of music may be a bit outside of some people’s comfort zone (hell, it’s out of mine), but it’s the kind of album you’ll hear in the background at a party (or an orgy of the hedonistic or non-hedonistic variety) and start nodding your head. And then you’ll run over to the host of the party/orgy (aren’t orgies a kind of party? And if not, shouldn’t they be? I need an orgy taxonomist, forthwith!) and demand to know what that great music is. And the host will be James Murphy and he’ll tell you it’s this band he just signed called YACHT. And then you’ll wake up. The dream will fade, but See Mystery Lights will still be awesome and James Murphy will still be an all-high musical badass.

I Don’t Like Phoenix. What’s Wrong with Me?

Despite being named one of Spin magazine’s 20 best albums of 2009 so far, Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix has not made a favorable impression upon yours truly. I know the album now comes floating in its own jar of critical jizz, but I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I get that it’s catchy, but that’s not a defense for repetitive songs that say exactly jack shit about fuckall.

But hold on: the wise people at Pitchfork.com had this to say about Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix: “It’s truly universal– everybody live, love, and die.” I’m with ya on the “die” part, Pitchfork. But I’m trying to keep an open mind here. I’ll allow that maybe, just maybe the fact that I don’t like an album that every-fucking-body else seems to like might suggest that I am either 1) wrong this time and/or 2) in need of help.

So I got help. From my good friend and resident musical pathologist Rebecca Mellor (no relation). We sat down over coffee (I wanted booze, but she suggested that drinking makes conversation with me somehow less productive and two or three times as vulgar. Since I’m seeking help here, I decided to trust the professional). I recorded our conversation and transcribed it below; you can judge for yourself if it’s me or the world that’s fucked up here.

Me: Thanks for meeting with me on the weekend.

Dr. M: You’re welcome. Thanks for showing up sober.

Me: No problem. So, have you listened to Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix?

Dr. M: I have. I’m pleased – and somewhat surprised – to report that you are perfectly justified in your contempt for this album.

Me: I am?

Dr. M: Certainly. Let me tell you what’s going on here: every year, sometimes twice a year, an album comes along that is just so outrageously catchy that it seduces a significant portion of the population. You might put MGMT and Vampire Weekend in this category, for instance.

Me: Those records were mostly okay.

Dr. M: Sure they were. But they weren’t great, were they?

Me: Definitely not. They were exactly okay. But this one dude swore to me that MGMT’s record was the album of the year last  year, despite the fact that it actually came out in 2007.

Dr. M: Exactly. People get so caught up in how catchy these kind of albums are that they experience something akin to a mild psychotic break and engage in acts of tragic – though sometimes hilarious – hyperbole in their rush to praise the album in question. The Phoenix album is no different. Pitchfork said Phoenix “discards anything– an outro, a bridge, an extra hi-hat hit– that could be deemed superfluous”, displaying a stunning and willful lack of awareness that the entire five and a half minutes of  “Love Like A Sunset Part I” is musically masturbatory bullshit.

Me: Wow. You sounded like me there for a second.

Dr. M: I’m sorry. But seeing people attribute near Christ-like healing powers to albums of the fluffiest musical stuff – the lyrics on this album aren’t “cryptic,” they’re just awful – provokes a strong reaction in me. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix represents a disturbing trend among these over-praised pop albums. MGMT had some songs that were a little ridiculous, but they were catchy and still somewhat coherent.

Me: “Time to Pretend” is a great song.

Dr. M: Exactly. MGMT and Vampire Weekend both snuck bits of real high quality music into their albums. Phoenix is cutting and pasting nonsense together into something that is melodically catchy but otherwise entirely meaningless.

Me: So let me play devil’s advocate here. The counterargument you’ll probably get is “What’s wrong with a good melody? The Beatles had melody. Kurt Cobain wrote good melodies. Why do you hate America?”

Dr. M: I’m not sure my patriotism will be questioned for not liking Phoenix, especially since they’re apparently French.

Me: You underestimate the stupid-power of internet comments.

Dr. M: Perhaps. But to address your counterargument, there’s nothing wrong with melody in and of itself. But catchy melodies can be used to make you nod your head to songs that can actually make you a stupider person. Great music, generally, requires a strong sense of melody, but if you’re singing words over that melody, you have to be careful what you’re planting in people’s brains. Consider Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals, for instance. While there’s no denying that “Music of the Night” is a melodically lovely tune, there is also no denying that Phantom of the Opera is a puffed up, plotless spectacle designed to rake in the disposable income of middle-aged white women.

Me: So you think Phoenix is trying to use their melodic powers to get people to buy and rave over a completely bullshit album?

Dr. M: That’s my professional opinion, yes. The lyrics on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix might as well be gibberish – they make Anthony Keidis and Axl Rose look like Allen Ginsberg and John Berryman by comparison. At the end of the day, because there are only so many musical notes at any given musician’s disposal, it is not enough to suggest that the mere arrangement of those notes into a pleasing  – or not pleasing but simply memorable – pattern is some kind of high artistic achievement. On a long enough timeline, any idiot could slap together a catchy melody entirely by accident. You could write a computer program that would make Phoenix songs and, while I don’t want to tell people what they should and should not listen to, I would suggest to you that understanding this album as anything other than a sugary pop confection might be a sign of brain damage.

Me: So, just so we’re clear here: I am not only correct in disliking Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, but it’s a sign that I’m of sound mind?

Dr. M: Yes, though you shouldn’t ignore the many other signs that you, specifically, are not of sound mind.

Me: Such as?

Dr. M: You work in an invisible office with an Imaginary Secretary.

Me: Right. But I don’t like Phoenix. So I’m okay, right?

Dr. M: (long sigh) Yes. Sure. You’re fine. Can I go now?

Me: Yeah. You sure you don’t to come back to the Imaginary Office, maybe have a beer and listen to Captain Beefheart?

Dr. M: I’m sure.

Me: Suit yourself.

And that’s how it went down, folks. You heard it from my own resident musical pathologist: the people at Pitchfork are officially brain-damaged.

Send hatemail and/or questions for the good doctor to askdoctormellor@gmail.com.

Chinese Dumb-ocracy: The Bollocks! Review, Part Fucking III

A palate cleanse is required while I let my Ommegang Abbey Ale settle. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I need to piss (gee, I wonder why so few people read this blog – this is quality shit, yeah?). Again with the water while I sniff the fruity and earthy notes that make up the head of an Ommegang Abbey Ale. This beer ain’t for amateurs – it’s a full on Belgian-style Dubbel that didn’t come to make small talk. I first heard of Ommegang Brewery (Belgian style brewery in Cooperstown, NY) in Beer magazine (you don’t subscribe? What the hell is wrong with you?) and I keep meaning to try their Hennepin Ale, but I always end up with the Abbey Ale. It’s win-win. Starting to feel the buzz now, and I’m wiping my sonic palate clean with Sonic Youth’s “Total Trash.” Hooah.

10:00PM: Free Association Songwriting: “I.R.S” makes no fucking sense. Axl makes references to various government offices but doesn’t really say what it is he wants them to do. Gee, maybe he’s a Republican (buh-dum tish). He also asks, “Would it even mattered/ The things that I’d say”. Well,  I think he asks that. That’s a question, right?

Here’s the thing. My band (Radical Edward – we had our first gig last night, but enough about me) has seven original songs right now. I’ve written or contributed lyrics to all of them. I recognize that you fuck with syllables to make the meter work, but I’m pretty goddamn diligent about making the lines make sense. You know, so people can comprehend them?  Axl is wandering around in a grammatical wasteland on Chinese Democracy and he took a decade and a half to cough up the shittiest lyrics this side of My Chemical Romance (who can at least string together a coherent line – it’s just gonna suck when they do it).

10:09PM: Jesus Monkeyfucking Christ: I know I just said “I.R.S.” makes no fucking sense, but then I heard “Madagascar.” Axl, waxing Jesus-like, sings “Forgive them that tear down my soul.” And then there’s a bunch of mismatched samples, including the one from Cool Hand Luke that famously introduced “Civil War,” a song I thought was Axl’s biggest descent into Bullshit until I heard “Madagascar.” Axl Rose samples Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I have a dream” speech on this song. Why? Is Axl worried about his civil rights as a white man with corn rows? Does he even realize that King was fighting for the rights of black people (from whom Axl didn’t wanna by a gold chain when he sang “One in a Million” – if you ask me how I know that song, I will scream like a girl and run away from you so fucking fast it will make your head spin) and that he fucking died for it? It seems beyond outrageous to me that Axl “My Engrish is So Suck” Rose would compare his struggle for… whatever the fuck he’s struggling for… to MLK’s struggle for racial goddamn equality. Christ, Axl, have you left no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Wow. I got so pissed off during “Madagascar” that I missed half of “This I Love.” Let’s start it over, shall we? Here we go: “This I Love” is a piano-y ballad where Axl whines, “Please God you must believe me/ I’ve searched the universe/ and found myself in her eyes.” It might be Rose’s best lyrical turn of the album (yes, folks, it’s that fucking bad), but still: please, God, don’t believe him.  “This I Love” is a schmaltzy ballad and yet, there still seems to be room for an annoying guitar solo. Anyone who knows me knows I have nothing against guitar solos, by the way. I just compare most of them to Tad Kubler’s solo on “Most People Are DJ’s” and find them sorely lacking.

The last song on Chinese Democracy is called “Prostitute” and I’m confused why it doesn’t include a parenthetical “I Am a”.  Axl sings, “I’ve done all I should,” with which I must immediately disagree – you, Mr. Rose, should go into a state of hiding that makes J.D. Salinger look like Ryan Seacrest.

Rose also asks, “Why would they/ tell me to please/ those that laugh in my face?” and I don’t know the answer, but I’m one of those who would definitely laugh in his face. The dude has lived in this country his whole life and speaks English like an aphasia patient. Axl kinda sounds like a hair metal Peter Cetera when he sings, “Ask yourself/ why I would choose/ to prostitute myself/ to live with fortune and shame” and while I’m not gonna take time out of my busy drinking schedule to ask myself why Axl Rose is a whore, I’ll concede that he is one. Also, the thought of a hair metal Peter Cetera is really fucking terrifying.

10:26PM: In summary… Chinese Democracy is actually about what I’d expect from an egomaniac locking himself in a studio for 15ish years – it’s a fucking mess. Overproduced, underwritten, and overperformed, it’s a testament to a man who crawled really far up his own ass and decided to make a home there. There are so many half-assed musical ideas on Chinese Democracy that it comes off as schizophrenic and, lyrically, it should be considered an act of literary (if not auditory) terrorism. I hereby authorize anyone in my band (or anyone who hears my band) to kill me (fucking kill me) if I ever write anything as fuck-awful as what Axl Rose has penned (in his own feces, as I understand it) on Chinese Democracy.

Final Palate Cleanse: I recommend more beer (I’m still working on the Ommegang Abbey Ale, and I have a dry Irish stout in reserve – it only took me three beers to get through Chinese Democracy, which I guess makes it slightly better than Chris Cornell’s Scream. That, for the record, is like saying you like the shit sandwich when the chef had corn the previous day as compared to when he or she had asparagus. It’s still a shit sandwich) and listening to Joe Strummer’s cover of “Redemption Song.” Twice.

Well, folks, I’m drunk. I’m gonna listen to something good and play video games. You’ve got a lot of choices when it comes to your music, and I’d like leave you with this bit of advice: none of them should be Chinese Democracy.

I Like Fever Ray. I Don’t Like Fever Ray.

The internet is a harsh mistress. She’s a place where nerds have an inherent upper hand over the masses, often displayed through sophomoric disses spelled with some kind of jumble of letters and numbers (someone told me once that this is called “Leet” or “L33t” or some fucking thing. I don’t care if I misnamed it here. Do you hear me, nerds? I…don’t…care.) . Of course, I myself am a nerd of at least one or two varieties, which brings me to my next point – the internet is a breeding ground for several different types of nerd, some of whom fancy themselves less nerdy than the rest. This can be particularly true of music critics and other cultural cognoscenti, who think that because they’ve never felt the awesome power of confirming a critical hit with a twenty-sided die they’re some how better than the rest of us. Well, they’re not. (And don’t knock D&D until you’ve tried it – you can be just as stuck in the basement sans girlfriend with dice and dry-erase dungeon maps as you can with Fassbinder and Duras films or My Bloody Valentine records.  In fact, I don’t want to make any generalizations here but it’s a scientific fact that people who listen to My Bloody Valentine never ever get laid. Ever)

I bring this up because there is a tendency among internet nerds to get a little smug; we may, on occasion, try to make you feel stupid for not liking the things we like. And then we’ll be mad if too many people start to like the things we like. Readers of Pitchfork.com know what I’m getting at here. They seem to like a band until said band reaches a wider audience (admit it, P-forkers: you don’t like it when fratties listen to the same shit you do) at which point the collective Pitchfork nose is turned up, emitting a tiny snort of disregard for the band’s new work (am I referring to Evil Urges? Yeah, probably), and the review will accuse them of 1) trying to reach the Starbucks crowd (as if nobody at Pitchfork has ever tasted a marble mocha macchiato before) and/or 2) trafficking in “dad rock” or some other perjorative term aimed at older people, teenagers, or non-pitchforkers. Then they’ll go to someplace (say, San Diego) and dig up some cadre of unlistenable douchebags with too many pedals and a laptop (say, Wavves) who they’ll then trumpet as orgasmically awesome. It’s almost like some perverse defense mechanism where the sniveling indie kids get mad when someone else starts to dig the same stuff they do so they either denounce it entirely or snatch it back with a Golemesque, “you cannot has!” For the record, I’m not accusing Pitchfork of not really liking the things they like. I’m just saying they can be smug twats sometimes, like when Ian Cohen (perhaps their biggest perpetrator of smug douchebaggery) suggested that the reason lots of dudes took in Ida Maria’s set at Coachella was because she nearly came out of her dress at one point and sang a song called “I Like You So Much Better when You’re Naked”. For Mr. Cohen, apparently, it is impossible that the men at Coachella might genuinely have liked Ida Maria’s music (that song is ridiculously catchy); no, for Cohen, we were all their to get boners and nothing more. To sum up, as much as is possible (it’s impossible), the Internet breeds self-anointed tastemakers, anonymous name-callers, and an entire ocean of verbally retarded haters. Also porn.

Which brings me (well, not really, but what the hell? We’re almost five hundred words in here and we’ve gotta talk about Fever Ray sooner or later) to Fever Ray, the solo album from The Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson. I never listened to The Knife, in part (I admit) because the critical jizz heaped upon them scared me right off of ‘em. Fever Ray, Andersson’s sort of eponymous album, has, if nothing else, convinced me to give The Knife a try.

Fever Ray, if you didn’t guess it by the long preamble, got a lot of positive press (from Pitchfork and others) and, in an effort to overcome my instant skepticism of high critical praise, I decided to pick up Fever Ray and see what all the fuss was all about. And, while I don’t agree with all the kudos lavished upon this album, I can definitely see the point.

A funny thing happened to me today as I prepared to write this review. I’ve had Fever Ray for months and I’ve listened to it all the way through about five times and I was all set to sit down here and shrug my shoulders and say that Fever Ray is no big deal, no need to get excited, et cetera. So then I put the album on, as is my wont when writing about and album. “If I Had a Heart” still doesn’t impress me, but “Dry and Dusty” still does. A lot. I know I’m not going to listen to this album again after this review, but I also know that there are things that you could like about it, if you liked that sort of thing. So Fever Ray is a not-bad album that I don’t like. It may even be a good album that I don’t like. If you like Portishead, but wish they’d slow down and fuck with their voices more, Fever Ray is probably your bag.

Andersson’s voice is certainly versatile, I think. It’s often buried under all manner of digital manipulation, but it’s a lot more compelling than listening to Kanye West teabag Autotune for an hour. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of electronic music (I listen to Massive Attack’s Mezzanine with some regularity, Portishead here and there, and LCD Soundsystem a lot. This is the problem – I compare all electronic music to LCD Soundsystem and James Murphy has so thoroughly bested the competition that he is, for me, to his respective genre what Guinness is to other beers. I imbibe and enjoy other beers, but Guinness is a thing unto itself. It’s practically an event.), so maybe I just don’t get Fever Ray.

But that’s kinda bullshit, isn’t it? I mean, if you really don’t get some piece of music and you’re willing to cop to it, hey, good for you, but I’m not jumping on that bandwagon. Pitchfork used the phrase “committed listens” to suggest that Fever Ray will hit your sonic g-spot if only you want it bad enough. Well, a shit sandwich is still going to taste like shit, no matter how many times you eat it. Committing to it isn’t gonna change a damn thing. I try, and hopefully I succeed, to suggest that, when I’ve enjoyed an album after a few rotations that it’s just a personal thing. I’m not saying you should work extra hard to like an album at all. Certain people are willing to work harder to enjoy an album than others and you’re not better or worse for it. I took the time to like Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica (okay, it wasn’t that hard – that album is awesome) but I don’t expect someone else to sit through it, say, seven times and argue with themselves until they’re convinced it’s good. I’ve worked as hard as I’m gonna to like Fever Ray and I still kinda like it and kinda don’t. It’s not that I don’t understand it – it causes me no puzzlement whatsoever. It’s simply that I like some of it and don’t like some of it, probably most of it. Anytime I’m trying to write a review of an album and I’m not intersested enough to talk about the album or the artist or really anything at all, that’s a bad sign.

On balance, I sense that people who really like mirky electronic music will like Fever Ray and think I’m ludicrous for not heaping more praise upon it, but I’ll think they’re all nuts for not like Trout Mask Replica and we’ll call it day. Unless they do like Trout Mask Replica, in which case, maybe I really do have a problem committing to Fever Ray. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go renew my vows to The Hold Steady.

I Drink My Way Through the New Chris Cornell Album (or, What the Fuck is Wrong with Me?) Pt. 1

Okay. It’s Saturday night. The girlfriend is out of town, friends are busy, but I have a few tall beers from the Ninkasi Brewery in Eugene, Oregon. Might as well crack one open and listen to… the new Chris Cornell album. The one that Timbalind produced.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

Well, you gotta make your own damn fun in the world sometimes so I’ve decided to get drunk enough to sit through Chris Cornell’s entire Scream album and write a review of it. Why would I do this? I do it for you, my loyal 6 to 9 readers (on average). For your entertainment. And edification.  I’m doing this more or less live, and I’ll go back and proofread it later. These are my unfiltered feelings on Scream.

9:19 pm. It Begins – My first beer of the night is the Ninkasi Tricerahops, their double – double – IPA. Special thanks to Jacques for the Ninkasi brews.

All right, Cornell, do your worst.

His worst is pretty bad, and damned if he hasn’t been trying to do his worst ever since Soundgarden broke up. I was a huge fan of theirs, especially Badmotorfinger and Superunknown. I know the radio made you sick of “Black Hole Sun,” but that album is straight up raucous from start to finish. But enough about that. Let’s live in the now.

Scream starts off with a synthesized horn fan-fare, the kind of obvious douchebag maneuver I’d expect from Kanye West. That introduces “Part of Me,” the chorus of which is “No, that bitch ain’t a part of me.” This all sung in Cornell’s whiny new R&B voice. Timbalind, in his infinite wisdom, decided to digitize Cornell’s voice on the chorus so that Cornell sounds like Megatron. Except I don’t recall Megatron ever being such a blatant fucking misogynist. If anyone in my band wrote a song this bad, I’d assault them. That is how bad this is. Ya know how Trent Reznor’s recent output has been kinda middlin’ lately? Well, upon hearing Scream, he Twittered (or “Twatted” as Stephen Colbert puts it) that he felt embarrassed for Chris Cornell. Me too, Trent. Me too.

“Part of Me” is waaaaaaaaaay too long. Tricerahops to the rescue! The song ends with a guitar flourish right out of 80′s Journey. Meaning it ends with a shitty guitar doodle.

9:25: MTV Party to Go – The songs seem to all blend together, as “Time” has started immediately from the Journey-esque shitstorm that ends “Part of Me”. You know, like those old MTV Party mix tapes they used to have? The chorus of “Time” consists of Cornell singing the word “Time” over and over in his Woman-hating Megatron voice and occasionally caterwauling “I wish we could rewind.” I think he means he wishes he could rewind time. I wish I could rewind time too, Chris. I’d go back to 9pm tonight and decide to listen to Middle Cyclone for the gazillionth time instead of taking  on this fool’s errand…. but no. I must not waver. It’s you or me, Chris Cornell/Megatron. And I have good beer on my side.

9:30: Chris Cornell Hates Your Girlfriend – “Nowadays I think like a woman/ I’ve been looking for blood,” Cornell sings on “Sweet Revenge.” Perhaps Audioslave broke up because the progressive chaps who used to be in Rage Against the Fact that We Sound Like the Beastie Boys grew tired of Chris Cornell’s constant misogynist tirades.  Wait. No. Audioslave broke up because they fucking sucked. Anyway… “Sweet Revenge” has a completely Auto-Tuned chorus. It’s as if Cornell and Timbalind set out to make a party album for douchebags who want to throw a theme party where the theme is “Proving the Utter Extent of Our Douchebaggery.” Scream is the Platonic ideal of douchebaggery.

9:36: Not nearly drunk enough – Fuck fuck fuck. I’m only four songs into this motherfucker. I’m listening to a song called “Get Up.” I used to think Chris Cornell had a good voice, but Timbalind apparently doesn’t think so because Cornell doesn’t seem to sing a single note on Scream that isn’t covered in digital jizz. “Get Up” has a guitar part toward the end that is exactly the kind of distorted guitar part you would use if you were an over-rated pop producer who has clearly never heard anyone play a real electric guitar.

“Get Up” has meandered into “Ground Zero.”  “Ground Zero” has less digital bullshit, but there’s still plenty of digital bullshit. This seems to be one of the platitude-filled, trite-ass (trite-cera-tops?) “positive” songs that Cornell has been coughing up lately (think “Be Yourself,” that really shitty single off the last Audiosuck album.  When I was a kid, he sang “I know I’m headin’ for the bottom/ but I’m riding you all the way.” That’s way more compelling than this shit)

9:42 p.m. Oh fuck. A love song – “Never Far Away” is next and the Megatron voice is back singing about how “You are the road I travel/ you were the words I write”. Wait a minute. Five songs ago, this asshole wanted “the girl/ but not what she’s going through.” We’re supposed to believe that this same motherfucker’s soul is saved by his lady love? (Not making this up. He sings, “I don’t have to pray anymore/ because my soul is saved”). The chorus of this song is unintelligible, but seems like it wouldn’t be out of place in a Nickelback song. Hey, Timbalind! You clearly hate music. Why not raise the stakes a little next time out and produce a Nickelback album? Can you make them worse?

Note: I’m gonna cap each part of this review at about 1000 words, so be sure to stay tuned for parts 2 through Whatever.

9:48 p.m. This is good beer – I’m halfway through. This song is called “Take Me Alive.” In the immortal words of J. Alfred Prufrock, I’d prefer not to (this beer is quite effective; not only is it delicious, but I’m buzzed enough that I can’t remember if the Eliot poem to which I’m referring is called “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” or not. I may have added the “J.”)

Is Kanye West the (Auto-Tuned) Voice of Our Generation?

Stealing from Zero Punctuation here:

The short answer is “No.”

The long answer is “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.”

Kanye West recently declared himself the voice of his generation (which is, I believe, my generation), which is, in my book, totally against the rules. You don’t get to decide you’re the voice of your generation; your generation decides that. I don’t think my generation has elected Kanye our Spokesdouche. Or, if we have, I missed the meeting. In case you’re wondering, my Voice of a Generation nominees are, in no particular order: Craig Finn, Jarvis Cocker, Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Matt Berninger. Take your pick.

Lest I be accused of hatership here, I will cop to really liking “Gold Digger” and a smattering of Mr. West’s other tracks. He’s probably the best of the mainstream rappers, which I admit is like saying he’s driving the short bus instead of traveling as a passenger, but I want you to know that I am acknowledging his modicum (or jot or iota) of talent. And I don’t hate hip-hop as a genre, either. To the contrary, I tend to compare all hip-hop I hear to “Rebel Without A Pause,” or “Don’t Believe the Hype” and I usually find it wanting.

I’m not rambling all this preamble because of West’s brash declaration (I’ve supported his brash declarations in the past, cheifly when he said “George W. Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Come on – you were thinking it too.) but because he’s released a new album and I, inspired by a recent debate over the merits of Auto-Tune (the prize in that discussion goes to my pal Jon from Portland who quipped, “Now, Now…for some, Auto Tune saves that one perfect take with that one slight imperfection…for Britney Spears that one imperfection is her whole voice.”), have actually bothered to listen to it.

The question is, can anyone use Auto-Tune creatively? I opined that Tom Waits would seriously bust some shit up with it, but we have no evidence of that so far. So, Mr. Waits, if you read Bollocks!(doubtful), feel free to throw your beaten-up hat in the ring and record something with Auto-Tune. In the meantime, we’ll settle for Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreak, his album that is more pop than hip-hop. More pop means more singing, which is where the Auto-Tune comes in.

The first thing I noticed, from album opener “Say You Will” (points to Kanye for a six minute pop song), is that Auto-Tune seems to make every male vocalist sound like a cross between Peter Gabriel and that douchebag from Maroon 5. That’s a pretty deep hole to start out in and Kanye’s lyrics don’t really do him any favors. I understand the dude’s personal life has been rough this year (join the club, Kanye), but “I admit I still fantasize about you” isn’t really digging for emotional gold.  Nor is, “He said his daughter’s got a brand new report card/ and all I’ve got is a brand new sports car” from “Welcome to Heartbreak.” Sorry, Kanye, you’re going to have hone your literary chops a bit more if you want to be the voice of my generation.

The Auto-Tune gets old immediately, as does West’s tendency to repeat one or two phrases over and over while using it. There are some good beats on 808s and Heartbreak and some fun 80s synthesizer bits (especially on “Robocop,” which is ridiculous but also the best song on the album), but that fucking Auto-Tune just gets in the way, especially on “Heartless,” where I thought he was actually doing a duet with that asshole from Maroon 5.

Okay, okay. I’ll stop bashing the Auto-Tune for a minute and focus on the song writing.

It’s great.

Well, it’s great if you like your lyrics on a par with Chris Martin’s. And some people do. You know, people who take John Grisham and Dan Brown seriously as novelists. (I know that’s elitist, but criticism is elitism, and don’t believe anyone who tells you different) Once you strip away all the shitty effects, 808s and Heartbreak doesn’t have much in the way of depth. It’s long on repetition (“Amazing” repeats “It’s amazing” a bunch of times for its chorus, in one of the most brilliant rhyme schemes in the history of music) and out-of-left-field cultural reference (like “How could you be so Dr. Evil?”). Hip-hop is a great venue for literary cleverness (and so is rock music, as Craig Finn proves), and I know this is more of a pop album, but the point still stands. The rhymes on this album are pretty lazy, which torpedos an album that’s supposed to be so personal.

The music itself is fun – an eclectic mix of hip-hop drums and the afore-mentioned 80s pop hotness, but the cumulative effect is nothing that isn’t surpassed on every Grand Buffet album.  West deserves points for trying to step outside of his comfort zone, but I can’t listen to his ambition. I have to listen to his music, and 808s and Heartbreak is a mostly hilariously bad attempt at a pop album (Common’s Electric Circus was a more daring and more satifsying step outside of the mainstream) with some mildly redeeming stuff in the middle (“Robocop” and “Street Lights”). If West is really feeling ambitious, he should ditch the effects entirely and front a punk band on his next album. Live drums, two guitars, and a bass. No Auto-Tune, either. Just yell it out, dude.

As far as 808s and Heartbreak goes as an admittedly arbitrary referendum on Auto-Tune, I honestly believe West would sing better without it. And I know he was going for a particular sound with the Auto-Tune but I can’t make myself like that sound, can I? No, I can’t. And I do recognize that the album is, by mainstream hip-hop standards, a bold move. The other hip-hop songs I’ve heard that use Auto-Tune are more annoying than this whole album, but the effect is still distractingly irritating. I realize, of course, that this is just my opinion, but so is everything else on Bollocks! In a genre so reliant on technology (which is not a bad thing at all), it might be a more refreshing move to switch over to more live instruments (as Atmosphere did on this year’s excellent When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint that Shit Gold). If you like the sound of Auto-Tune, this album might be a revelation to you, but the only thing it reveals to me is (call me a purist or a hater or whatever you want) that I really fucking hate Auto-Tune.