The Singles Jukebox

The thing about youth culture is, I don’t understand it…

[Video][Website]
[4.30]

Josh Langhoff: So are these guys like the British System of a Down, or what?
[6]

Brad Shoup: As content-light as the pop and indie-rock music their fans surely disdain. At least hardcore kept finding ways to make Reagan-baiting funny — or, rather, they let anti-Reaganism stand as substitute for a reconstructed outlook in all spheres. Ugh… just typing that made me feel two decades older. I dig the chorus, hate the chants, find the plodding riff — translated through about ten filters and three instruments — amusing, and would rather spend time with Appalachian Terror Unit, even if they fueled their Hummers with dog blood. The ferocity of their convictions translates into the tunes.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: This is less a song than a time warp. My age: 14; my location: Virginia boarding school; my personality: blithering asshole. Before my first-ever roommate moved into the infirmary due to my being a blithering asshole, she kept a steady musical diet of punk, J-rock, ’80s Weird Al and They Might Be Giants that outranked my unbalanced diet of Sarah Brightman and ’00s R&B for speaker listening. (The headphone stipulation went into effect day three and was discarded, mostly by me, a week later.) At one point, her favorite song was Bad Religion’s “Kyoto Now,” which I always thought was about some dude called Giordano, being a teenage asshole who got into the school with more working knowledge of belly shirts and Web forums than global warming. But anyway, I heard that theme and every other part of this — the metalcore drums, the growled vocals, the guitar timbre, the spoken-word British guys, probably even the melodramatic “ICE!” — from the other side of the increasingly embattled room, and it is freaking me out. If you ever read this, Kate, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I went on to have a job either. What do you think of Enter Shikari?
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: The piecemeal components transition about as smoothly as does clicking on a link from the “More recommended videos” sidebar on YouTube. My favorite part is the squally At The Drive-In throwback that kicks things off; the most baffling is the Mike Skinner-esque spoken word section, which I suspect might be “political” if I bothered deciphering it. Elsewhere, the dubstep bass and nails-on-a-chalkboard synths are much more welcome than the Kaiser Chiefsian Brit-rock interludes. Uhh… needs more drops?
[5]

Iain Forrester: There’s a certain tension between message and medium here. The song leaps around all over the place between different sound attack modes to protest against war and Arctic drilling. They say no to “military hardware”, but musically cluster bomb bass drops and guttural battle cry screaming get a big YES. It’s sort of telling that the single best part of the song is when they play the role of their targets — something about screaming “There’s oil in the ICE!/There’s oil in my EYES!” is just really great fun. I’m not sure whether they would be pleased that I find the whole thing even more silly than it is enjoyable, but it works for me.
[8]

Jer Fairall: The crazed lurch of the music and hysterical delivery of the vocals remind me of my current favourite “post-hardcore” act Future Of The Left, and in “Arguing With Thermometers” (a very FOTL title, by the way) they seem pissed off about the right things — “that’s the sound of another door shutting in the face of progress” is exactly the kind of portentous/pretentious phrase I might have Sharpied onto my notebook during the gloom of high school. The intermittent guttural belches and some ugly-ass synths push this a bit too far into bonehead territory for comfort, though, and I hated that whole monolithic, muted guitar sound enough during the heyday of nu-metal to ever want to experience it again.
[5]

Zach Lyon: This is what bothers me about people complaining about the braggadocio of hip hop: watch this video and tell me these little shits don’t love themselves like only misanthropic white boys can.
[2]

John Seroff: No need to wait for next year’s DJ Earworm mix; here’s the prognosticated sounds of 2012 right now: System of a Down, Skrillex, Helmet, Limp Bizkit, The Bravery. I guess those Mayans really were on to something. One bonus point earned for actually giving a shit about the state of the world; that’s a rare find these days.
[4]

Alex Ostroff: An answer to a question nobody asked. Namely, “What would happen if you combined death metal, haircut indie, particularly farty brostep, and late-career The Streets?” Avoids being irredeemable if only because they makes “Arguing With Thermometers” seem like a natural mix of all of the worst things ever, instead of something forced.
[2]

Michaela Drapes: Ok, ‘fess up — who arranged for a humanitarian airdrop of the entire back catalogs of Static X, Deftones and Rage Against the Machine in upper middle class suburbs after the London riots? I was really hoping that this blurb was going to be my chance to name check Kula Shaker. I am extremely disappointed that this is not the case.
[0]

2 blergs » Friday, January 27th, 2012 11:00 am

We prefer our Nicki undiluted…

[Video][Website]
[6.62]

Kat Stevens: D:
[10]

Michaela Drapes: Nicki Minaj accurately portrays that moment that I fully believe happens at some point in every woman’s life, that moment that you really just want to get in some chick’s face and scream “YOU A STUPID HOE!” while having a dayglo-sick seizure of rage. I’m sorry, I’m not apologizing for this — I’ve been there. And any woman who says she hasn’t is lying. (There, I said it.) Also, extra one million points for excessive use of the entire Lime Crime makeup line and what’s probably some custom leather from Zana Bayne.
[9]

Sabina Tang: I wouldn’t normally derive this much hilarity from a woman calling another woman a stupid hoe for three minutes, but Nicki is so unabashedly, unrestrainedly absurdist here that one can’t picture her in a queen-bitch slap-down position, despite her own insistence. Jennifer’s the putative sweetheart, and Angelina’s too cool for school, but Nicki’s like that girl who showed up at the senior prom drunk, sporting pink hair and a bumblebee costume. She’s outside the power dichotomy, and thus one suspects her of truthmongering, whoever her abstract target happens to be. Plus, 1x bonus point for being “the highest single-video VEVO number in 24 hours EVER!” with a dislike-to-like ratio of 2:1. I’d like to think that has more to do with the ARGH NIGHTMARE FUEL EYES than the actual song, but no — this ain’t no “Super Bass.” And I’m more than fine with that.
[8]

Iain Forrester: The video has actually done a great job in giving me more of a way into this. The rapid flashing of images and sharp intake of breath draws attention to the sheer force of the long held “woooooooouuuuuuuuuld” with frantic claps and whistles beneath, and the release of tension at its end. From an appreciation of that all of the other stuff started dropping into place and… well, it doesn’t all fit perfectly, but it’s a much more enjoyable mess than first impressions suggested.
[7]

Andy Hutchins: Speeding up and tweaking Diplo’s “Slight Work” beat and giving it to Nicki is a good enough theft that I’m not going to hold it against Diamond Kuts, the (female!) Philly DJ/producer who is responsible for “Stupid Hoe.” Nicki uses it to both abuse all of her more outlandish tropes (“I wish a bitch wouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuld”) and wink at them (“one, two, three, do the Nicki Minaj blink!”), and it’s all in service of a gender-bending Li’l Kim diss from Roman Zolanski that sounds best in the breakdown, which caroms from Nicki sing-songing to Nicki singing to verbal diarrhea to the entirely unnecessary “I am the female Weezy” clarification. No one else was aiming for that title, Nicki, and, besides, being Nicki Minaj should really be more than enough.
[6]

Zach Lyon: Time to make a mental bookmark for Diamond Kuts. Didn’t matter who was rapping over it; beat is unimpeachable. Nicki’s guns are blazing for a good minute or so, but it’s sort of sad to me that it’s still directed at Lil’ Kim. Also sad that every single woman in hip hop (and I say “single” because there’s only ever one at a time) aren’t taken seriously if they aren’t constantly referring to their diznicks. I really hope Nicki tries to be more than the female Weezy.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: I’d get more out of T. Dunham’s wobbling, metallic beat if the Neptunes hadn’t used the same palette to less stilted effect eight years ago on Missy Elliott’s ”On and On.” But Minaj is more dexterous than Missy ever was, and her elastic vocal chords do much to animate the instrumental. At times, the verve arrives in lyrical form — I enjoy the playful simplicity of “Who’s gassing this ho: BP?” — but more often, it’s in the plasticity of Nicki’s personae. The best part might be the self-parody of “one, two, three; do the Nicki Minaj blink,” but the fun doesn’t end there. It’s not every performer who could morph that “Stupid hoes is my enemy” nursery rhyme into a dancehall toast with just the faintest switch in vocal tone, and few others would think to follow that up with the exercise in silliness that is the sung final chorus. There, Minaj sounds like a bored kid teasing her little sister, not an MC gunning for the top title.
[7]

Jer Fairall: Minimalist weirdness of the circa 2001 Missy and Timbaland variety, an eleven year gulf Nicki bridges only via name checks of Brad Pitt’s then-and-now love interests. Nicki doesn’t need to identify herself as Angelina for that to be obvious, as she is clearly living in the right now, and while, sure, it is the right now of post-BP and post-MJ, it is also the right now of Nicki-the-Female-Weezy and Nicki at the Superbowl with Madonna. More important, though, it is the right now of a black female pop superstar adopting the alter ego of a gay male Übermensch and actually getting away with it. That’s enough, for me, to make right now and “Stupid Hoe,” no matter what else you can say about either, both feel pretty damn awesome.
[8]

Alfred Soto: If it did more than just echo T.I.’s “Bring Em Out,” I’d likely be this song’s most fervent supporter. But from its dated references (Angelina? Jennifer?) and slang (“diznick”?!) to rubberband vowels, it’s guaranteed to annoy, so much so that I wonder if in a complimentary mood I might laud it as the sort of Dada moment that enlivened M.I.A.’s ///Y/. So, yes, let me settle on this judgment then: a sound collage by an artist enraptured by performing, never more transported than when in the last third she affects a dancehall voice and reminds us she’s a stupid hoe herself.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Lil Kim? Jennifer Aniston? What’s next, shitting on Sassy C? Maybe caring about celebrities is a natural outgrowth of caring about musicians, but this practically screams “mixtape escapee”. The “stupid hoes is my enemy” dancehall/jump rope bit was kinda great; can I get a whole song with that? 
[3]

John Seroff: Here is what mostly wasted talent ultimately nets Nicki Minaj, the master of 1000 nasal voices, at her likely apex: juvenile, over caffeinated novelty rap, irritating and devoid of verve. She’s not just the Female Weezy; Nicki is the exemplar of the despicable Young Money aesthetic that mistakes laziness for non sequitur, speed for technique, success for talent, cynicism for swag. “Stupid”‘s postmodern lack of engagement drives me nuts, mostly because I really want to like both it and Nicki. High-velocity, repetitive, sloppy, pseudo-outsider nutball playground rhymes really push my pleasure buttons so I get the reference points but this shit is not bananas; Nicki does not got your money. What she’s got is music for seventh graders with social disorders to scream angrily at each other on the short bus. What I’ve got is a fading headache and Cloreen Baconskin on repeat to clean my palate of this artless, lifeless horseshit.
[1]

Jamieson Cox: I want to assign two different scores to “Stupid Hoe”: one corresponding to the song’s first 45 seconds, and another for the remainder. The former segment features Nicki firing on all cylinders, tossing out silly similes and chuckle-worthy disses in equal measure with the sort of hyperkinetic energy and flow that was so endearing on early cuts like “Itty Bitty Piggy.” (There’s some similarities between each track’s percussive backing melange, too.) But after that prolonged “would”, Nicki begins to overwhelm and detract from the proceedings with the sheer force of her personality. The multiple voices/personas are a cute novelty, but there’s not much substance behind them in “Stupid Hoe.” And as for that last line? There’s a world of difference between Wayne’s genuine, compelling strangeness and her contrived quirks on tracks like this. Show, don’t tell.
[6]

Alex Ostroff: If nothing else, “Stupid Hoe” is a sign that now that she’s conquered the charts, it’s time for Dear Old Nicki to make a reappearance: its clearest antecedent is Beam Me Up Scotty mixtape track “Itty Bitty Piggy.” The hyperactive yo-yo beat and whistles and endless handclaps and whooping are the best beat she’s had in ages — a hyperactive playground for Roman Zolanski to clamber over — and from the stretched out “wooooouuuuullllllld” to the jump-rope chant that leads us out of the track, there’s little here that disappoints. That the video proves Nicki was secretly an Animorph all along is a bonus. So why only an [8]? Because the Ben Aqua #jukewerk Remix exists.
[8]

no blergs » Friday, January 27th, 2012 8:00 am

Nothing like a double shot of Nicki to start your Friday morning…

[Video][Website]
[4.22]

Alfred Soto: Not with that shouting and choice of producer.
[1]

Iain Forrester: Strongly disguising Nicki Minaj for all but fifteen seconds at the end of your uninspired dance pop does at least make those fifteen seconds sound really exciting by comparison.
[4]

John Seroff: Whatever perceptible heat remains in “Turn Me On” is little more than residual warmth from the copy machine. Nicki lends little more than her name and Guetta is absolutely in cruise control. Utterly seamless, like a Twinkie.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: The precise sound of club desperation, between the plea of a melody repeated so often there’s no way anyone’s listening, to Nicki Minaj thinking she ever needs to sing on a Guetta track, to ”I’m too young to die,” the polar opposite of Lana that ends up there anyway.
[4]

Sabina Tang: Possibly the intentional opposite of “Stupid Hoe.” You can tell perfectly well it’s Nicki Minaj belting it out like an anonymous house diva for hire, so for 70 per cent of the song you’re sitting there like, is she… going to… do… stuff…? And she does rap, eventually, for like two lines. There doesn’t seem to be much of a point otherwise. Sonically, it’s all right, but I’ve yet to discern a point in Guetta at all, so no spoiler there.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: This doesn’t inspire the gut feeling of revulsion I get from the standard Guetta tricks, which is as good a start as any. The lyrics have this weird drifting metaphor that starts off with Nicki needing her boy to be a doctor who eventually morphs into superhero and then maybe a mad scientist. In this context, “make me come alive, come on and turn me on” would make for a magnificent music video, but she’s already done the Bride of Frankenstein thing on SNL. We don’t nearly get enough rapping on “Turn Me On,” especially in comparison to the last Guetta/Minaj collaboration, but that opening synth figure is almost subtle and the chorus is infinitely better than Flo Rida’s, so it pretty much evens out.
[6]

Michaela Drapes: Nicki Minaj and her multiple personalities are “feeling weird”? You don’t say! Honestly, I’ll take her any way she wants to be packaged: rapping alter egos, Eurotrash Love Parade diva, alternate-reality Cyndi Lauper — it matters not. As long as she continues to effectively drown out Beyoncé and Gaga and Rihanna and Katy Perry, I’m happy.
[9]

Brad Shoup: She whips from an undefined melancholy to some kind of angry challenge in the chorus, neither of which is a look Guetta can get from Taio. But Taio would have a dude to handle saying “I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I.”
[4]

Josh Langhoff: If David Guetta came up to me and said, “You wanna completely suppress your vibrant personality and appear on one of my tracks?” I’d probably take him up on it. Nothing to lose except money. What’s the equivalent for those of us who are not hilarious Harajuku goddesses? James Patterson asking one of us to ghostwrite? His chapters are so short, I bet you get a real sense of accomplishment.
[2]

no blergs » Friday, January 27th, 2012 7:00 am

Sadly, not a sample of “Boogie Shoes.”

[Video][Website]
[4.20]

Anthony Easton: Can someone explain to me how this is supposed to function? Does the basic quality of this convince someone to fuck Fiddy, or is it a rococo abstraction, where the decoration of an idea is more important than the concept itself?
[0]

John Seroff: I don’t know if I can think of another song where the DJ feels compelled to play an unexpurgated chunk of the sampled song at the beginning of the new track.  Is it an an attempt to imply how much money you paid for the rights?  Crass and predominantly artless braggadocio are the hallmarks of “I Just Wanna” so maybe 50 is just setting the tone.
[5]

Brad Shoup: D.R.U.G.S. can do construction, and now he’s hanging a shingle out for total renovation services. Somehow, KC’s hoariest single gets reconfigured into a potent funk of toxic horn clouds and constant downstroke. Lucky for our producer, 50′s in loverman mode, his secret strength. It gets him singing, he starts asking for cookies: this is entertainment, and it’s probably the answer to the “whether ’tis better to be loved or feared” conundrum.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Sadder than an artist who doesn’t realize everyone has left the VIP room is one who can’t describe his own dilemma.  
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: When 50′s in his zone — which is to say, when he’s mumbling about dickin’ hos over beats that trip over themselves to broadcast how expensive they are — he’s — well, he’s still mumbling about dickin’ hos, so I can’t give him my full approval. But props to D.R.U.G.S. for making “Get Down Tonight” sound more like a towering disco inferno than, well, “Disco Inferno.” Either one.
[6]

10 blergs » Thursday, January 26th, 2012 2:59 pm

Hey Anthony Easton, remember Faith Hill?

[Video][Website]
[4.50]

Anthony Easton: God I miss Faith Hill. I miss every domestic breakdown, every velvet-covered, sumptuous inch of her genius — I miss every melodramatic inch of her. Every second of this — the vocal gymnastics, the guitar phase out, the soft/loud/soft structure — suggests her at her late ’90s peak. But nothing has gone away; unlike Whitney or Celine, she has maintained her consummate skill.
[9]

John Seroff: A shitty song presented with a fig leaf of slide guitar is still a shitty song, even if it’s performed by that nice lady what sings about the football on the teevee.
[3]

Brad Shoup: Alongside some future wartime country compilation, file in your self-compiled disc of fake soldier songs. (My recommendations: Zac Brown Band’s “Free” and Sara Evans’ “No Place That Far”.) Leave room for a contender that tries to pass off the phrase “war between the vanities”. I know Ry-Ry wrote this for a friend deployed overseas, but the phrase’s self-conscious, creative-writing-workshop lyricism blows the whole thing to hell. Give him credit, though, for pulling the tune back into the realm of troubled (not threatened) relationships, which still has a longer marketplace tail. The real casualty here is Faith, who once aspired to the full range of pop personalities allowed our top female stars, but is currently mired in a personal Green Zone of turgid power ballads.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The only Faith Hill performance I’ve loved is on “I Need You,” a 2007 duet with hubby Tim McGraw in which she attains seismic levels of lust and longing. Her voice deepened with age, Hill is commanding without being imperial — unfortunately on a song as generic as Rubbermaid food bins. Someone hook this woman up with real pros.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Country and soft-rock are fusing faster and faster into the same genre, so it’s not surprising that Faith Hill would borrow Ryan Tedder’s flannel guitars for her comeback. That doesn’t make it a good look.
[3]

Isabel Cole: I don’t know what makes me sadder: that this is, in fact, the cover I thought it could not possibly be, or that the Skyped-in emotion of this thoroughly mediocre rendition does not remotely approach Adam Lambert’s gorgeous, careful, yearning take on New Year’s Eve 2008. When Adam sighs the textually unremarkable line “I get lost in the beauty of everyone I see,” he communicates what a precarious way to exist that can be, constantly teetering on the edge of spellbound and overwhelmed; Faith just gets lost amid saccharinely jangling guitars and dull, direction-less bombast.
[3]

3 blergs » Thursday, January 26th, 2012 10:59 am

Not a ? & the Mysterians sample, nor a sequel to “21 Questions,” if you were wondering…

[Video][Website]
[7.00]

Iain Forrester: The backing goes vwm-vwm-vwm and buzzes a bit in a functional but not particularly thrilling way, leaving this all about JME’s non-stop flow of bragging and shit-talking. The novelty of understanding all of the parochial punchlines helps to make this instantly appealing to me (Richard Hammond! Teddy Sheringham!), but they are really good punchlines, there’s lots more of those, and even when he is listing the names of people I’ve never heard of he’s still remarkably engaging.
[8]

Kat Stevens: “Stop chatting shit, poo-poo chewer!” = amazing. Also pretty good: Skepta’s NRRRRR-NUUUUR noises, slagging off Jeremy Clarkson, and “nobody likes getting a punch in the face/because when you get punched in the face it hurts“. Well done everybody.
[8]

Jer Fairall: Scattershot, masturbatory verbiage, but the goofball wordplay (“Stop talkin’ shit, poo poo chewer”) soars just as often as it lands with a puzzling thud (“Nobody wants a punch in the face/cause when you get punched in the face it hurts”). “One take!” he boasts at the end, perhaps a bit too impetuously.
[6]

John Seroff: Grime probably never stood a real chance of long-term life stateside. Too much is lost in the translation from English to english; the references are utterly opaque and the touring opportunities are slim even for heavy hitters like Wiley or Dizzy.  More’s the pity for technical specialists like JME.  His driven forty-eight consecutive bars would benefit from some variance of tactics and pace but “96 Fuckries” is still an impressive stunt and surprisingly easy to replay. 
[7]

Brad Shoup: Can you hate on similes if you’re just eliding the key words? Either way, he still drops a few “likes,” nearly as often as he drops neat images. The knotty beat gives one the feeling of lingering in the Donut Secret House, only without any possibility of resolution. Weird to feel this uneasy in the presence of throwback boasting. 
[6]

Alex Ostroff: Of the two Adenuga brothers, I’d previously paid more attention to Skepta, but JME is evidently just as talented. The way he navigates his way through ”Bare MCs lie too much/If not then they say ‘like’ too much/Easy peasy similes used frequently really gets on my nervous/Reason JME’s lyrically sick recently I don’t pepper my words,” is mesmerizing. He switches up his flow often enough that it sometimes feels slightly off the beat — but never enough that it totally derails, and he has complete control of what he’s doing. (Plus, as a Canadian who spent a couple of summers watching Top Gear with my best friends from Chicago, the Jeremy Clarkson reference is worth a chuckle at least.)
[7]

5 blergs » Thursday, January 26th, 2012 7:13 am

The sun’s UV rays can cause cataracts, and The Cataracs cause.. hmm, this isn’t working, is it?

[Video][Website]
[4.71]

Anthony Easton: I love the small details: how he says the word “swing,” how rueful the line “all these girls are so pretty/all of us getting so shitty” is, and rhyming “mary jane” with “Vicodin.”. Don’t love: the skittering beat, the use of auto-tune, the misuse of champagne, the banality of going to the club as an example of malaise or ennui or other French words for being exquisitely bored, and the jigsaw quality of it. So it’s basically a wash.
[4]

Brad Shoup: The last time I got drunk ’til the sun rose was before Christmas. I figured I’d finish writing up my top ten albums of 2011 by the fire pit, to which I added both a new log and starter log. Dumb, but so was trying to put out the now-raging fire by pouring mostly-finished cups of wine and beer cans on it. “Sunrise” manages to stave off total stupidity, except for the spoken-word bropreciation at the end. (“Ain’t fuckin’, what the fuck you for?” isn’t dumb so much as spiritually bankrupt.) Their stupidest choice, I think, is keeping a lid on Dev; her verses would’ve buried what’s on hand. Instead, she waxes Sofia Coppola over submerged keyboard chords and a skipping, pitched-up vocal sample while the Cataracs read from a pad three inches from their eyes. 
[4]

Iain Forrester: Dev offers clubbing as mystical experience, a blurry world filled with wonder where it seems appropriate that the sunrise is where the song’s emphasis goes. Her choice of words in “me and my best friends getting shitty” seems odd, but only until The Cataracs show up and prove it correct.
[6]

John Seroff: Pseudo-profundity for pledge week that heaves to with all the charm of an alarm clock and quickly flames out lyrically with the queasy rhyming of city, pretty and shitty.  Things get worse from there. “On and on / Like Simpsons seasons” wins the prize for most unintentionally accurate, self-assessed metaphor. Interminable and unnecessary.
[3]

Isabel Cole: This is probably my fault and not the song’s, but I can’t shake the impression that the vocals are an ironically earnest (earnestly ironic?) Youtube cover of a Ke$ha song. Described like that it sounds awful but nestled into a hazy collection of pleasing electronic burbles it’s quite pretty if not exciting. Too bad what little momentum builds up  gets completely derailed by the blank-voiced, aggressively boring rapping — they’d have been better served by Our Lady Of The Dollar Sign herself.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Three parts “Like a G6,” including its “popping bottles in the ice” hook; one part LMFAO drained of obnoxiousness; one part the previously unheard “I Gotta Feeling” cover programmed and cooed by the Double Rainbow guy after he turned the camera off. The charts have tried worse recipes.
[7]

Sabina Tang: Dev’s indiepop voice and some of the video’s throwaway details are charming (yes, one does tend to pay attention to weird lizards and insects on Southern Hemisphere beach-bum travelogues), but the rest is terribly lazy. I had to look up why these people were famous, but “Like A G6″ was a much better song than this one.
[3]

5 blergs » Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 3:00 pm

All hands on fret!

[Video][Website]
[5.14]

Frank Kogan: B.o.B hops atop the Bo train, takes the beat to your house and gone again; André 3000 reads the right book well, tossing those words like ringing a bell — and cuts deals with the kiddies, too: I’ll give you guitars for your big rebel noise, but you still gotta eat your vegetables.
[8]

Brad Shoup: It’d be a mistake, I believe, to think this song’s invocation of guitars as a stab at rock authenticity — you know where the quotes go — when the important image is Bobby and Andre standing on rooftops, making a ruckus. A Eddie Hazel/Sonny Sharrock/Prince kind of technical ecstasy: that’s what I’m hearing. Of course, I could be scrambled by the controlled chaos of ”Bo Diddley”, which sets B.o.B free to drop two-thirds of a fantastic, loping verse (by my measurement, he loses right after “So long! So long!”, which is made for little kids to yell along with). Andre’s wry and wise as usual, but his grandiosity looks a lot like dream-munchies. People have learned to play guitar to acquire dumber things than snacks, I guess. 
[9]

Alfred Soto: Spitting so much he loses his footing in a puddle, B.o.B cedes most of the track to Andre, whose lizardly loquacity is fast becoming the rap equivalent of Steve Vai.
[4]

John Seroff: “Play the Guitar” revels in sloth:  brief lyrics, a lazy “hey/ho” singalong ending, B.O.B.’s entire sodden rhyme book, a thorough plundering of “Hey Bo Diddley” that neglects to introduce a second theme.  Dre’s awkward patter ain’t helping; he’s taken lately to shoehorning the would-be deep into awkward places.  ”Do you cry in tune, nigga?” might have had some impact in circumstances better than this backpack hashtag pop rap.  Here it, and 3K’s whole verse, feels contrivedly sage, disjointed and tone deaf – which covers my major problems with Andre’s recent rash of sub-par guest spots in a nutshell.
[4]

Iain Forrester: The stuttered backing and repetition of the title is really annoying. I find myself thinking “Just get on with it!” well before they do, and what guitar playing there is doesn’t really add much. On the other hand, the image of standing on top of chicken shops and Dunkin’ Donuts to play it is almost great enough to make up for it.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: “I do this for the people.” Judging by the self-mockery B.o.B sinks to here (he boasts and plays the guitar! Except ha ha, that’s not really him! All you anti-rap hecklers were secretly right!), the people suck. Andre puts forth admirable effort that’s needed elsewhere.
[2]

Jamieson Cox: It only takes five seconds for “Play the Guitar” to reach a point of supersaturation; I think there’s a better song tucked in here somewhere, but it needs to be excavated with care. It’s difficult to hone in on one particularly pleasing or sticky component when there’s so much happening. In a lyrical sense, I found it difficult to hang on after “Fresh to death like I’m dressed for a eulogy” – neither a Dr. J reference nor a standard-issue verse from the André 3000 Guest Appearance Factory could completely revive my enthusiasm. We all might’ve benefited if B.o.B. spent more time focusing on the titular instrument and less time obsessing over dippy little sonic fragments, but I guess that home-run bat effect was really worth it.  
[4]

10 blergs » Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 11:00 am

Nelly. Uh, he’s OK, we guess.

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Edward Okulicz: Nelly’s always been a better purveyor of rap as a subset of dance music than he is an exponent of rap for its own sake, and within about four seconds of the chorus, I was having severe Big K.R.I.T. withdrawal symptoms.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Et in Arcadia, Ego — the urbanity restores itself to its rural routes,  the country never leaves, the original sin was in a garden, and even in the garden (even when pulling bars, even stripped to the drawers) the sin retains its rural dirt. The singing chorus reminds us a bit of that lost purity and the repeating of a tight chorus reminds us more. That said, it seems an obvious point repeated more than it should be.
[6]

John Seroff: Drumma Boy’s retread John Carpenter hook is a throwaway, so let’s focus on the names on the tin.  Nelly (always more interesting as a personality than a rapper) and T.I. (casual, sharp and smooth) are established commodities but the casual hip hop fan may not immediately place 2 Chainz.  Chainz is the new nom de plume of Playaz Circle’s Tity Boi, who is taking the Peedi Peedi path to a more radio-friendly moniker.  With a certifiable hit under his belt, 2 Chainz gets a fair amount of shine online and in the industry; both of the better-known players on the track shout him out by name and cede him the final verse.  It’s a lot of build-up for an unremarkable few bars and an at-best laconic style that defines “Country Ass” as serviceable but difficult to get excited about.
[5]

Brad Shoup: The intro preps the title as something our men get reduced to, but everything after turns it into a populist badge. I’m a little annoyed by the spoken vocal under Nelly’s; he always sounds like he’s double-tracked anyway, especially when he’s doing the sing-song thing. But 2 Chainz gets all the points for the Sosa joke, and Drumma Boy gets synths to sound like tubas, and the track like a nightsquall.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Ignorant! Belligerent! At least T.I. can still sell a redoubtable concept. But the other billed star can’t sell a song as country as IKEA.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Nelly with rappers (OK, mainly with 2 Chainz; T.I. is acres from both his sweet spot and anyplace country) and Drumma Boy’s melodrama > Nelly with soppy slush by fake Ryan Tedder. 
[7]

2 blergs » Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 7:00 am

Remember 2003?

[Video][Website]
[5.91]

Jamieson Cox: There are three especially catchy elements of “Simple Song” currently lodged within my brain. The drums, courtesy of new Shin Joe Plummer, are delightfully splashy, and the ascending vocal melody that pops up now and again is sublime. But the star of the show is James Mercer’s earnest, relatable, inimitable yelp, back in a big way after a five-year absence. His first chirp induces immediate recall of a slew of Shins classics, from “Caring is Creepy” to “Young Pilgrims” to [insert your favourite]. I can’t believe it’s been eight years since Garden State and “New Slang” and Natalie Portman; “Simple Song” might not change any lives, but hearing Mercer squeak out “I know that things can really get rough, when you go it alone” in the chorus of yet another rock-solid indie-pop cut is sure to induce a couple wide grins.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: When The Shins were at their best — and it was a fine best — it was because they were able to take a very plain form of indie rock and execute it with an eye for detail. James Mercer and cohort had a knack for realizing bedroom Big Star melodies with vivid clarity and produced with crystalline perfection. It’s that sense of care that made a ditty as simple as “New Slang” so affecting, and its the absence of the same that makes “Simple Song” so inessential. The Shins by their nature walk so close to anonymity that a creative retread another band could get away with becomes, for them, crippling.
[5]

Iain Forrester: So it turns out that, membership changes and half-decade waits be damned, The Shins still sound exactly like The Shins, picking up where they left off. So “Simple Song” is not that simple, crammed full to bursting with melody and is held together in the absence of much discernible meaning by James Mercer’s extraordinarily elastic voice. And yes, I still like them.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I was hoping that we had gotten rid of The Shins; this song is not simple, but its desperation to be power pop is just sad.
[3]

Alfred Soto: When last we saw Jason Mercer he’d lent pathos and abstruseness to a Danger Mouse project. Over a full-bodied mix that sounds like somebody discovered How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb last year, Mercer strains for notes in a futile attempt to accompany the electric rhythm strums which too many indie fools think signify an embrace of rock verities, and to escape lyrics about upturned boats on cliffs.
[5]

B Michael Payne: Not to fall too deeply into the music writer cliché hole, but this sounds like The Shins doing a Who song! I do not think I mind it. I’ve admittedly missed the last few go arounds with The Shins, but I’ve always felt like their main strength was making really muscular-sounding pop music that wouldn’t scare off the bespectacled and lithe of limb. “Simple Song” has that snappy-shiny James Mercer vocal effect going on in spades, and a not-unprepossessing collection of hooks and riffs. While it’s more rock-schlock than literary-lissome, I think it’s a good direction for the band. They’re notoriously tight and musical-minded, and their talents perhaps lay in making anthemic indie rock with a big heart rather than reverb-y indie with the presence to fill only life-changing headphones.
[7]

Sally O’Rourke: It’s a new decade for The Shins: not the 2010s, the 1970s. “Simple Song” finds James Mercer infusing his partly-cloudy psych pop with a bit of Who’s Next swagger, from the assertive bash of the drums to the eddying keyboards to the backing vocals that roar like a packed stadium. It’s not quite classic rock revivalism; the band’s too winsome, the melody too fragile, for that kind of brio. But the added punch helps anchor the otherwise ethereal arrangement, letting the song soar without wisping away.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Mercer jumps from an Animal Collective-type intro to scaling a ziggurat before dawn with ten guitars in his backpack in no time at all. But I’m greedy for the hooks, for men singing above their range, for all the guitar-pomp architecture you can assemble with your hired goons.
[8]

Jer Fairall: There’s enough going on here that I’m tempted to proclaim this the least bored I’ve ever been by this lot, a lush prog-rock expansiveness that the listener might easily mistake for depth. But it all winds and builds towards nothing in particular, unless a deadpan joke with the song’s title as the punchline qualifies as something, and the alleged pop genius James Mercer remains a bland non-entity as a frontman.
[5]

John Seroff: Proggy, sloggy, soggy fare with the uncomfortable and naked feel of a concept album track isolated from its narrative.  Unlikely to change anyone’s life.
[4]

Michaela Drapes: Skims just close enough to familiar territory with faint echoes of back catalog tics that I was forced to go back to listen to The Shins’ three previous albums to look for clues and evidence of progress. It’s here, surprisingly! Sleeker production, streamlined melodic and lyrical tropes — bionic Shins, perhaps. Unfortunately, this chrome sheen is about the only interesting thing going on. I’m afraid this is one of those cases where my benchmark for this band will have everything to do with the hot afternoon in 2001 when I slipped a discarded promo of Oh! Inverted World rescued from an Austin used CD store’s post-SXSW $5 bin into my junky car CD player and let a few scraggly dudes change my life for a couple of months. That time is as distant for The Shins, I think, as it is for me.
[6]

9 blergs » Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 2:59 pm