Uh, it's a bunch of reviews of CDs I bought in the last year or so. Thought that was fairly obvious.
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Audioslave Revelations
This, it may surprise you, sounds a lot like an Audioslave album. Big booming drum-and-bass (in the truest sense) underlying Tom Morello's post-modern clusterfunk guitar work, just like Rage Against The Machine; Chris Cornell's thermonuclear yodelling out front, just like Soundgarden. It does exactly what it says on the label. It's the sum of its parts. It's the front guy from the 'Garden and the back three from the Rage. No Revelation there.
It's rather good, though. Note to Velvet Revolver, Rock Star Colon Supernova and whatever the fuck that thing with Vince Neil is about: here's a supergroup that is actually, in some way, super.
The Revelation here is more evolution than revolution; the overall feel is identifiably and unmistakably Raging In The Garden but compared to the last couple of 'Slave outings, there's a greater sense of coherence to the finished product. Their self titled debut and whatever the fuck the second one was called both suffered from bipolar disorder; either full-throttle stomp-'n'-shout anthems (some of which, like Cochise, were genuinely O for Oresome) or brooding, twiddly little downers (oddly enough not really my cup of chai latte.) Revelations even sees the lads turning their hand, rather effectively, to some James Brown style soul - admittedly Original Fire is still more Seattle than Motown, but it works.
Revelations also sees the 'Slave finally getting their knickers in a twist over political issues, in a throwback to the engine room's days of Raging. Through the first two discs it seemed the outfit made a conscious decision to sidestep the political stuff which drove (and eventually disintegrated) RATM; coming back to this is either a sign that they're more comfortable as a band, or that they're out of ideas. Witness the fitness as they hand out the leftie smackdowns to Dubya & Friends over their pre- and post-Katrina incompetence. We like a good leftie smackdown here at the World of Bollocks. We also like big fuck-off riffs with a dude screaming his hole out over the top of them. Audioslave have all of the above pretty much sorted.
Highlights: Original Fire, One And The Same, Somedays et al.
Lowlights: Solid throughout but gets a bit whiny in stoppage time.
Rating: Four headless Kurts out of five.
The Black Keys Magic Potion
The Black Keys, the most prominent two-person guitar and drum combo not to involve a brother and sister who root each other, are from Akron, Ohio, where the rubber meets the road. Akron is the world headquarters of the Goodyear Tire [sic] and Rubber Company, as alluded to in the title of their previous album, 2004's Rubber Factory. Now we're going somewhere a bit odd here so just stick with me. Akron is where Goodyear make all their NASCAR race tyres, thousands of them a year. Now in NASCAR, handling is paramount. Barrelling around a banked oval at 180mph a few pube-widths from a faceful of concrete, it's important to have the handling balance right if you don't want to suck. In fact, having a 'handle' on your racecar is spoken of as critical come race day. NASCAR teams who've lost that balance and are suddenly falling off the competitiveness envelope often admit: "We've lost the handle."
The Black Keys have lost the handle.
Compared to its supercharged, irresistable predecessors, Magic Potion is different. It's moodier, more reflective, more dissonant. It's also not as good.
Highlights: Your Touch is as good a track as anything they've done.
Lowlights: Your Touch is only Track 2. The end of the album is a long way from there.
Rating: Two trashed NASCARs out of five.
The CasanovasAll Night Long
Before Airbourne were the alleged saviours of big, stupid rock and roll in Australia and adjoining territories, there was the Casanovas. Fifteen minutes ago these lads were destined for big things. They were touring with the Datsuns, the Donnas and Motley Crue, the Brit music rags were staining trou over their debut EP and follow-up album, both of which were shit-hot, and their single Shake It was nominate for an ARIA for best single and got picked up by Just Jeans for one of their stupid commercials. Indeed your correspondent has been banging on about them for ever and a day and has made at least half the reading audience go see them with him.
Well, folks, cue the Difficult Second Album. If the Black Keys have lost the handle, the Casanovas have merely been polishing theirs a bit too much. Moving production to LA and hiring a Big Name Producer (former Tool buttontwiddler Sylvia Massy Shivy) has resulted in the rough edges of their self-titled debut being sanded off. Unfortunately, as it turns out, all the Casanovas have is rough edges. What's left is a melange of 80's poodle metal and what could be mistaken for modern country rock. They also appear to be taking themselves vaguely seriously. This is not a good idea when you are writing songs that are cheesier than a cheeseburger with extra cheese at a fondue party. But, then again as the Good Lord said, what a friend we have in cheeses.
Highlights: Their cover of I Thank You (with a liner note shout-out to the Powder Monkeys) is fucking gold; Overload and Heartbreaker are also worth the price of admission.
Lowlights: Tommy Boyce's hideously-twee countrified (read curntree-fahhyed) drawl in Too Much ('Cos yer toooooo murch but y' ain't tooo murtch fer moyyy...') should have most of Tamworth throwing themselves into the Peel River, presuming there's enough water in there to drown in.
Rating: Hit and miss, marginally more of the former than the latter; three Whitesnake guitar solos out of five.
The Dandy Warhols Odditorium or Warlords of Mars
The Verve are a pack of lying bastards. The drugs do work.
And judging by this incoherent lot of flotsam, they work very well.
Highlights: The two tracks that got played on Triple J.
Lowlights: Never seeing that thirty bucks again.
Rating: One and a half rehab interventions out of five. Go buy Come Down or Thirteen Tales instead.
The Datsuns Smoke and Mirrors
You're simply asking for it when the closing track to your latest album is entitled Too Much Smoke, Too Little Fire. Particularly when you were one of the most heavily hyped bands of the early Noughties, mentioned in the same breath as Jet, the Hives, the Vines, the White Stripes and friends following your swaggering self-titled debut of 2002, then you went and put out a fair-to-middling second album and quietly disappeared back into the Waikato from whence you came.
To be fair, the indulgences on their DSA (Difficult Second Album™) can largely be blamed on the (over)production values instilled by former Led Zep bassist/keyboardist/self-indulgent wanker John Paul Jones, but the Datsuns' biggest problem on album three is a simple one: they've run out of good songs to write. A bit like the Black Crowes did in the late '90s, which is oddly appropriate as that seems to be who the Datsuns have decided they want to sound like. Smoke and Mirrors sees lashings of lap-steel slide guitar and gospel-style female backing vocals replacing the grit and gusto of their awesome STDA (Self Titled Debut Album™, precursor to the DSA). But it doesn't change the fact that the songs just aren't as good. Even their much maligned second album Outta Sight, Outta Mind had better songs - Messin' Around, Girl's Best Friend - and they don't even have JPJ as a blamehound.*
Highlights: A couple of decent tracks on board, but ironically the best song on the album, isn't; it's the B-side to the Stuck Here For Days single, Kick & A Bang. Not the first time the Dattos have pulled this stunt; Supergyration, one of their best songs and a live-set favourite, never actually got onto any of their albums.
Lowlights: The rest, up to and including the Art Deco inspired cover.
I hate Art Deco. It looks totally wank.
Rating: Two and a half rusty 1982 Bluebirds out of five.
*A blamehound is a dog kept around a household for the express purpose of blaming dinner-table farts thereupon. (Billy Connolly, 1976)
Deja Voodoo Back In Brown
Yes, the dreaded phenomena of DSA seems to afflict joke bands too...
Deja Voodoo are a New Zealand institution, largely because they should be in one. The two cunts (as they would prefer themselves referred to) behind Deja Voodoo, Matt Heath and Chris Stapp, were the geniuses behind the most heroically offensive TV show in New Zealand TV history, Back Of The Y, which basically consisted of jokes about poo, wanking, drugs, police brutality and the continuing misadventures of drunken stunt guru Randy Cambell who takes up stunt challenges suggested by home viewers 'because you dared me to!' and manages to fuck them up. (Case in point: the week where someone wrote in and suggested he 'stick a firecracker in his arse and fuck off'.) Yes, it's just 'Shitscared' from The Late Show, just drunker and without that smug cunt Rob Sitch anywhere in sight. And it's being made into a feature film, titled 'The Devil Dared Me To.'
Deja Voodoo began as the house band on Back Of The Y, and somehow got big enough to take over the country. Their debut single Beers sold its ring off, ditto their debut album Brown Sabbath on the back of songs like Beers, I Smoked P But I'm All Right, More Beers, Your Boyfriend Sucks and Randy (an ode to NZ's favourite daredevil stuntman). Jesus Christ, as we speak they're even representing the Shaky Isles at the massive South By Southwest festival in the US. This, lentils and germs, is a Fucking Big Deal.
So what's wrong with Back In Brown? Well, the lyrics are funnier - case in point the first single, Can't Do What I Wanna Do With You (Cos You Weren't Even Born In The Eighties) - but the songsmanship is suffering. Big, stupid rock needs big, stupid riffs, and it looks like they've used most of theirs up. Still, there's some good stuff on here, and what do you want from a joke band anyway. With a movie AND a new series of Back Of The Y coming out this year, no real surprise that Heath and Stapp have spread their creativity a tad thin over the past months.
Highlights: Shotgun, Team Police, History Never Deletes (about looking up internet porn on your girlfriend's computer. No, really.)
Lowlights: What, no Even More Beers? These boys have forgotten where they came from. Otago Uni, as it happens.
Rating: Three firecrackers up the arse out of five.
EvenFree Kicks
This isn't really a new album - it came out two or three years back - but you'd have been forgiven for not noticing it when it came out. Even have never really been media darlings. Triple J used to play their stuff - particularly around the turn of the century with songs like Black Umbrella, Electric Light and Kommercial Radio - but record company wranglings and lengthening gaps between albums have put paid to even that weak shaft of dappled sunlight offering sustenance. This is a damn shame. In a fairer universe, Even would have strung together more hits than a western Sydney YouTube schoolyard punchup. Singer-guitarist Ash Naylor writes intelligent, melodic pop that you would be delighted to hear on commercial radio. He gladly credits his influences - both of them, the 60s and the 70s - and there's great enticing wafts of Bowie, Sgt Peppers-era Beatles and all kinds of lovely stuff in there.
So I've had a whinge about pretty much everything else under review today, how about Free Kicks? It's good. Really good. Ash and the lads have lost little, despite the industry quietly forgetting about them. Even songs are always instantly identifiable, and always greater than the sum of their parts and/or their influences. Even songs make you feel good about being alive. Buy this album and stop being such a miserable cunt already.
Highlights: A good two-thirds of the album are genuinely tops, the rest is... pleasant.
Lowlights: Triple J are playing the likes of Josh Pyke and Bob Evans (didn't he host Perfect Match?) instead of them. The next album - if the boys can ever get their acts together to finish it (another endemic Even issue) - will hopefully get more airplay.
Rating: Four black umbrellas out of five.
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Tune in next time for Part Two of our New Music Special, where our irascible reviewer whinges about more indifferent follow-up albums from bands you don't give an arse about, and tries to pretend he's not just turning into a sad old bastard who thinks all decent music stopped being released in Insert Year Here. Honest.
1 comment:
.. and in sporting news
Australia: 1 (+375)
Keffer Lovers: 0
Number 1 in the world? Pffft .. Symmo just had his match payments on the 100+ margin in NZ :P
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