Music That's Not Nearly As Good As You. Week 3

Ohh for the love of God Nooo! Little Timmy! Get out of the house!! That's right Timmy's mom, It’s back. Everyone’s favorite slurfest. Complete with all new burns, jabs and out-and-out personal attacks. Although this week’s post is especially painful for me actually. Two of my all time favorite artists have fallen far, far from grace- and right into a level of music that’s not nearly as good as you. Remember kids, I don’t enjoy this. Well some of it, I enjoy some of it. But not all of it. Head Automatica – Propaganda This album is so unimaginably bad- it actually scratched the word “TUOLLES“ into the surface of my Glassjaw discs (get a mirror.) I don’t know what the hell Palumbo is smoking or jamming in his arm/up his nose but apparently: losing edge = losing the ability to sustain notes and melody. It’s like this guy ignored the actual music on this album’s tracks and decided it would be fun to do a grating parody of his own voice. The Glassjaw fan in me (the one that just got hit by an 18-wheeler called Warner Records and the production manglery of Howard Benson) can’t help but hope this is some sort of a ‘fuck you’ to a label forcing Daryl to do unspeakable things. Unfortunately I know better. I know a bad album and worse: a washed up artist, when I hear one. Daryl, who you fuckin’ now? Asobi Seksu - Citrus Nothing like a female lead singer that can’t really sing. Apparently this band is a big deal. Apparently I’m the only one who gives a shit about the rules. The music’s not even that bad. It’s just that it’s not that good, certainly not good enough to carry a weak frontman. Frontperson. Whatever. Bands like this make me wonder what’s on TV. Walkmen - Hundred Miles Off Downloading Walkman’s new single did not put a virus on my hard drive crashing my computer. I just wish that it had. This brand of Monotonous, throwback drivel practically begs me to express-mail cow dung to labels like ‘Record Collection’ and say, “Now it’s your turn; review this.” ‘Record Collection,’ no really, that’s a clever name. Thursday – A city By the Light Divided. This album is about as pretentious and incomprehensible as its title. But not even the fun and widely outlandish brand of pretentious like Coheed; this is the pretension of a band that expects their fans to still nod at all of the old riffs and screams that worked 6 years ago without asking why those sounds don’t work anymore. But seriously, are all of my generation’s seminal post-hardcore acts resigned to mutilating their own legacy by releasing work that misses every attempted note and chord? And what’s worse this record is getting critical praise! It’s like all of the critics who originally made a sour-face at Thursday-and bands like them- when the screaming thing first stepped into mainstream, are now throwing out tokens of appreciation because they’ve finally realized that the rest of the world is rabid for the sounds that they never recognized as important. You can almost hear the inner dialogue of these brain dead penman, “ Hmm I was never a enamored with Thursday’s earlier work- I always found them too in love with their own aggression and fractal approach to melody, but this latest record marks a vast maturity for group. You can almost taste the wisdom that they’ve earned over the years on the road working the hard music scene.” No. I can almost taste a band that’s two songs away from writing anti-bush tracks in hopes of masquerading as a poignant and viable group despite every decibel that chokes out of their speakers declaring the opposite. Go back to Jersey guys. This car ride is over. "TUOLLES…“ “TUOLLES…“ “TUOLLES!!!“