It’s not OK. We promise…

[Video][Website]
[4.00]

Patrick St. Michel: So is Gerard Way trying to sell me a comic book about psychic teenagers? And why is he shouting at me?
[2]

Alfred Soto: Don’t let the four-on-the-floor beat fool you: this is neither dance nor electronic music but a My Chemical Romance plaint shouted and programmed by professional griefers. 
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: Ohhhhhh, him from My Chemical Romance. Now I get why he seems to hate the dance-music audience so much.
[3]

Mallory O’Donnell: The song I will surely turn to in the future when I need an instant headache.
[1]

Anthony Easton: My great cultural blank spot is video games — and i don’t quite understand what a griefer is, so it seems kind of silly to review this, but I genuinely like it. I guess I like being yelled at, and I like when music sort of sounds like grindy sirens — and this sounds like hella grindy sirens. 
[7]

Brad Shoup: I like the cymbals supplementing Way’s pinched-off syllables, and the pinched, bassy throb resists the facile chaos Deadmau5 tends to summon. Forget the title, though; it’s more like “Professional InfoWars Moderators”.
[5]

Will Adams: Like “Sofi Needs a Ladder” before it, “Professional Griefers” is gritty, claustrophobic, and something you might get hurt while dancing to. Hard to figure out what Gerard Way’s screaming about on the verses; there’s only a couple macabre images that slip through the hammering electro — “girls with guns on LSD.” But when the guitars fall out, and a melodic synth wanders in, we find Gerard dropping his grief for a plea: “Gimme the sound/to see.” Before he reveals too much of what’s behind his punky aggression, though, the dizzy synths return and conceal the emotion.
[8]

And what do we think of gestures toward jazz…?

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Will Adams: Oooooooh, preeeeeeetty.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: Flying Lotus puts aside the glitchy electronics in favor of more jazz-leaning sounds, while Erykah Badu contributes vocals.  It’s a combination that sounds nice, but the two artists behind “See Thru To U” don’t know what to do with it, the whole track content to jog in place instead of push beyond sounding lovely.  Pleasant, but aimless
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: I keep forgetting that Flying Lotus could be cataloged under “jazz” just as easily as he is under “electronica.” And that even such absurdly broad categorizations are still the enemy.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Reminds me of an updated take on Sonny & Linda Sharrock, or maybe just an snippet from the cutting room. Honestly, I wish this were longer; the guitar hints at wizardry, and five more minutes may have forced the drums away from jazz signifying, and into jazz creativity. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: Someone laid down a decent rhythm track and — well, what? Who’s doing whom a favor?
[4]

Anthony Easton: Sometimes pretty and cryptic just comes across as obvious and kind of lazy.
[3]

This is also a stock photo called “Britishes”…

[Video][Website]
[4.67]

Jonathan Bogart: Thank God for old-fashioned electronic craftsmen who wouldn’t know a dubstep drop if it bit them on the ass.
[7]

Anthony Easton: That sonorous underpinning — more industrial than musical — that grounds the track starting at around 2:19 is really interesting; I want to hear more of that. Also, perhaps whistles.
[6]

Alfred Soto: I last heard Groove Armada overhauling a Bryan Ferry number into something approaching sleaze, and if the boys had kept this instrumental I might have praised it in those terms too.
[4]

Will Adams: The background bleeps and flecks of white noise will try to convince you that there’s something interesting happening here, but don’t be fooled; that two-note bassline is here to stay for the better half of “Pull Up”‘s six-minute runtime. Discordant, repetitive, and numbing in all the ways that house shouldn’t be.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Putting Slarta John on the track is a bit like getting Terry Crews to advertise your body wash: he may have fun, but your crap’s not going to get any cooler. Not that the MC can be compared to Mr. Crews with a straight face; he’s not make-up-for-“Last Stand (For England)“-good, just good enough. GA rides a two-note riff into the ground: drop your needle anywhere and it’s boring.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: Groove Armada have a surprisingly decent-sized batch of kind-of-OK songs, of which this almost is one. Except, bless, they’ve gone and released all the dicking around they do in the studio while writing their album as a stand-alone track. Easy mistake to make, right?
[4]

Yes, we will be covering “Hot Cheetos and Takis” soon…

[Video][Website]
[5.17]

Brad Shoup: The vocal clip is so Polow, but credit goes to Yung Berg and FutureProducers forum vet Arch Tha Boss. They bang out a steady bob for Driicky to rent out, and befitting a producer who knows he’s about to blow, Arch trots out a bunch of approaches. The best one is probably the sonar synthstreaks. Yeah, you can rock to this, but wouldn’t you rather listen to “Hot Cheetos & Takis” for the hundredth time?
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: This is fine and has some neat production wrinkles (video game noises), but in all honesty, “Hot Cheetos & Takis” has ruined this for me. That meme is a lot more fun, and the elementary school kids in it manage to avoid hash tag rap entirely.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: The simple pleasures in life, I guess?
[6]

Anthony Easton: I love the “hey, hey” sound and i love the beats, which have an aggressive rigour. Some of the rhymes are tight, and the scream-if-you-wanna-go-faster after a first minute or so is effective as hell. The rest I find either dull or inscrutable.
[6]

Will Adams: Things really get going after the first minute, when a warped siren divebombs into the fray and Driicky chooses polyrhythm as his weapon. That moment is brief, however, and apart from that and some interesting word mutations (“internationoo/vaginoo”), “Snapbacks and Tattoos” is in one ear, out the other.
[5]

Mallory O’Donnell: The track is a monster, the vocalist a… different kind of monster.
[4]

I’ll never hear “Keep On Truckin’” the same way again…

[Video][Website]
[3.12]

Brad Shoup: Country finally throws its hands up and says, “Fuck it, just listen to Rebirth“.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: I grew up in a town that was definitely hillbilly proud, where owning a truck was less a consumer choice and more of an unwritten law. The kids driving jacked-up pickups to high school were held in the same social esteem as the well-off students in BMWs (I drove a Dodge Intrepid, and was nowhere near the senior prom court). It’s the sort of rural-life detail that is commonplace until you go somewhere a little less redneck rockin,’ which is when you realize driving a truck is something more than a transportation choice. I once had to borrow my brother’s red Chevy to drive down to a friend’s place in Orange County, and at least three people commented on the truck in not particularly positive terms. Or all the times I’d be with my dad in his silver truck in downtown Los Angeles, with Brooks & Dunn blasting out the speakers, getting weird looks from those around us. Tim McGraw writing a chugging, shout-together-now rallying cry called “Truck Yeah” isn’t remotely ridiculous to me because a dust-powdered truck is a sign of coming from a specific lifestyle, one where the same kids pulling into the Friday football games were playing Tim McGraw. Even though the song isn’t particularly daring musically and McGraw’s Lil’ Wayne namedrop at the start seems to go against everything else the song trumpets (people in my hometown are probably confused by Lil’ Wayne, though everyone started lightening up when McGraw teamed up with Nelly) I’m willing to look past those details because I know I’ll hear this a bunch when I go home for Christmas, and I am OK with it.   
[7]

Anthony Easton: It’s terrible, everything about this is terrible — the truck sounds, the grinding guitars, the vocals breaking up because he’s trying too hard, his self-identifying as a rock star, rhyming “last call” with “Hallejuah”. All of it. But it’s fascinating, seeing that the young wolves are nipping at his heels and trying to cling to relevance; it’s been years since anything he’s done has been hip, but he’s so good at earnestly falling apart. I wonder why he’s trying to be Brantley Gilbert, unless he wants a hit more than he wants his dignity, which, considering the market, makes sense.
[2]

Alfred Soto: Everything except the brontosaurus riff is gross: the title pun, McGraw’s usually exemplary vocals, the attempt to out-macho Jason Aldean and Toby Keith. Is this what Reagan voters felt when George H.W. Bush was caught on camera saying a bad word?
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: No, truck you.
[0]

Will Adams: The hashtag marketing (“kids use the Twitter, right?”), the lame cultural signifiers (“iPods + Lil Wayne = score!”), and the bridge’s unappealing attempt to create an all-encompassing atmosphere (“I know you seem to address only the hillbillies earlier in the song, but whatever!”) all tell me that Tim and his crew are hellbent on making “#TRUCKYEAH” happen. But it’s not going to happen. Two points for the guitar riff.
[2]

Pete Baran: At first glance it’s a divisive country community song which tries to be as inclusive as possible. There is a sense that for country to go wide properly, to hit the pop vein, it needs these days to invoke playground rules about being “in our gang”. Which could be problematic if the rules of the gang were not as weedy as these, which boil down to — er — occasionally liking country (and appreciating the occasional truck). Whilst I am all for not creative false divisions in pop, this blatant attempt at widening the definitions of a country (or at least a Tim McGraw) fan seems coldly commercially cynical. As does any time when a word which is never used as a euphemism for “fuck” is then deployed in pop — see Def Leppard and “I suppose a little Rock’s out of the question”.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: The problem isn’t the big Procrustean tent approach (though he’s probably not really listening to Weezy, nor is he really rapping here) nor the self-parody (though it has to be, right?) nor even the shit pun (though it is, stupendously.) No, the problem is this: “I can find me a girl with a truck, yeah!” No. You either lead with your catchphrase, or you make it make sense from start. Not both.
[4]

Yes, they really are asking for it.

[Video][Website]
[2.25]

Mallory O’Donnell: You’re gonna love genital warts!
[1]

Jonathan Bogart: Right sentiment, wrong tense.
[4]

Will Adams: It doesn’t feel right giving “You’re Gonna Love This” a low score just because it has an asking-for-it title. That doesn’t matter, though, when sub-Black Eyed Peas rapping, hokey pitch-shifted vocals, bargain basement synths, and a Jeffrey Dahmer reference are involved. Win-win.
[1]

Katherine St Asaph: Found in a confidential email, addressees 3OH!3, sender obfuscated, subject line “How To Usurp LMFAO’s Bro Throne”: “Punch yourself in the face, the forehead if you’re squeamish. Use nails and fists. Hang off the couch headfirst. Hold your eyes open and don’t blink. That wasn’t pleasant for you, but now you know how we feel. – Dahmer, Sebert, Gordy, Adams Jr., St. Asaph et al”
[1]

Anthony Easton: This will be the highest score that the track will get, I am sure. I love 3OH!3, because for all their butch fronting about their prowess, it just seems like so much work — they are trying to convince us of their own prowess. There are other things — the weird Dahmer reference, the electro/aggro choices in music, how they spit verses, the Ke$ha-worthy autotune, and ugly as an aesthetic choice. Ending it with the lalalalas guarantees an extra point. 
[8]

Brad Shoup: A couple points for the psychopathic vocal distortion, with its shades of Home Security Decoys. It’s the only reminder that these guys were ever supposed to be “funny”.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Is he demanding legitimate rape or…?
[0]

Patrick St. Michel: Fifty seconds into this, I was pretty sure I’d be jotting down a one-liner about how 3OH!3 think you can win a woman’s attention by buying her drinks, and maybe giving this a [2]. Five seconds later, the cyborg voice came in and I subtracted one point. Then came the line about cannibalism. Three cringe-inducing moments in under a buck twenty? That’s impressive for all the wrong reasons. 
[0]

See? We can stand Fucking Drake and The Weeknd when The Other Side can speak.

[Video][Website]
[6.78]

Mallory O’Donnell: Kind of a “Me & U” for the current substance abuse and self-analysis set. The track itself, absurdly minimal, is like “The Rain” reduced to a radar ping, while Jhené’s pliant but frustratingly childlike vocal narrows in for the (relative) kill. 
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: If my surroundings sounded like a Fisher-Price xylophone like Aiko’s, I’d do drugs too. It’s admirable that R&B is producing a dreary track for every bleary hour, even more that they’re generally Weeknd answer songs, but Aiko’s too childlike in affect, in a way I suspect’s supposed to be alluring; what should be frustration comes off as fanservice. I’d rather wait 44 minutes for grown-up Melanie Fiona.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Producer Fisticuffs (best known for Miguel’s “Quickie”) does his best Shebib, with icy, spare beats and a sense of hovering dread, but Jhené inhabits the despairing, intoxication-fading-into-psychosis headspace and then some, a performance with only the faintest amount of affect letting slip the void in the soul.
[9]

Anthony Easton: I love how she sings “frustrated,” and I love how she is off-beat, just a little bit. I love the cliches imbued with a fresh hatred and am fond of the exhausted coda of self-loathing near the end. 
[8]

Brad Shoup: When I start sounding like a popular YouTube comment, it’s probably time to get back in the box, but I’m still figuring out if it’s Aiko’s wilfull beigeness that offends me so, or beige as a vocal coloration in ’10s R&B.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The Weeknd’s ethos lives in this latest example of somnambulism-and-blues, with vocals that sound as if she learned to sing from reading early Joan Didion novels aloud. A song that’s not so much abandoned as uninhabited. “Answer songs” work if their subjects don’t treat themselves like objects. Was Cassie unavailable?
[4]

Will Adams: A sequel to “King of Hearts” if I ever heard it. It’s not just Jhené’s icy delivery and the moody backing that unwittingly echoes its predecessor; it’s the continuation of that same night where the protagonist met this king. Now it is 3:16am, and the curtain has pulled back to reveal a toxic figure, shattering the pedestal on which he once sat. The devastating finale, however, leaves Jhené as no better off – “You’re all that I know,” she murmurs as a final beat seals her fate.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: Drake and to a lesser extent The Weeknd have achieved success thanks to music about hedonism, about nights spent indulging in booze, drugs and women.  That last one is problematic: often  women are just another intoxicant to enjoy, no different than the coke or cough syrup. Rare is the woman in a Drake or Weeknd song that is given a personality, the women wandering around the sonic loft both occupy solely to throw themselves at the performers so that then they can sulk about it later.  It has been refreshing, then, to watch artists like JoJo and now Jhené Aiko take the same minimalist production to create songs that exist in the same drug-fueled world as those two Canadian acts, but with  way more character development. The protagonist of “3:16am” could be attending one of The Weeknd’s late-night shit shows, but instead of just diving in she offers a reason for the indulgence. “I wanna fly/if it all goes well/then I will/but what if I don’t?/I’ll be right where I was before.” Then someone coerces her to dive in (picture someone whispering “Trust me girl/you want to be high for this”) before true intentions come out and the song’s protagonist goes from rage to desperation as she realizes she’s been tossed aside.  “3:16am” gives the women usually kept in the background of the party to tell their story, and it turns out they are way more interesting than the rich dudes.
[9]

Iain Mew: Jhené is planning to fly… “but what if I don’t?“. It’s a question so shocking that the whole track reels away in horror to leave only a plinking ghost of a tune in the darkness. That’s just the strongest of several moments where she lets silence speak volumes, and with her vocals serve up isolation and suspense to go with it. Also it may be it’s because it took me so long to get it, but I appreciate her taking the early hours title game to a new level by fixing up a track time to match.
[8]

Hush hush keep it down now — NPR carries.

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Jonathan Bogart: For almost three decades now, Aimee Mann has made pleasant, well-kempt middle-aged music for pleasant, well-kempt middle-aged people. She’s finally aged into the role.
[5]

Anthony Easton: You know between the Portlandia appearances and the videos, one would think that Mann would have a sense of humour, or at least charm, but her music is self serious in a way her public persona isn’t.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Aimee Mann asks for it. Like her target audience, she doesn’t listen to pop music. She once wrote songs about the perfidy of the record business (like Wilco!). Her voice is a prairie-flat sob that lets admonishments and contorted metaphors sit unchallenged. For years she left me suspicious of Jon Brion. Here she writes and sings another anomic plaint about someone luckier than Aimee Mann. Her audience will appreciate it.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: I’ve been a fan for years, always with a queasy feeling that she tries a little hard with her extended metaphors and complex rhyming patterns. But I’m With Stupid and Bachelor No. 2 are great records precisely because of their meticulousness and fussiness; “Charmer” doesn’t try hard enough. It has a flat melody that makes her voice sound lifeless rather than weary and the only colour comes from the organ. How many artists fight for artistic and financial freedom as hard as Mann and subsequently become less adventurous?
[5]

Mallory O’Donnell: Almost twenty years and nothing’s changed… this toes the line between clever and annoying the way all her work has, and I’m still not sure two-oh down the line if I like it or not. But surely someone should be making songs like this, and I’m currently still fine with it being her.
[5]

Brad Shoup: “Sturdy” is a compliment best reserved for AFL offensive guards and homemade mailboxes. Maybe we can throw AM-rock throwbacks in there too.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: “This is a battle you cannot fight — no, you only can surrender”: lyric or musical strategy? The organ is hefty ammunition (and, as usual, more inventive than the genre’s stereotype), but the melody bows down and out.
[6]

Jer Fairall: A one-time critic’s darling whose high profile peaked long enough ago that she was left to make some of the best (Lost In Space, @#%&*! Smilers), or when failing that, her most ambitious (The Forgotten Arm) records with little more than her loyal cultists (*waves*) paying attention, “Charmer” is enough of a piece with the pretty much everything else in the Aimee Mann catalogue that it all but invites casual listeners to shrug “yup, sounds like Aimee Mann” somewhere around the thirty-second point before moving on to the new Gotye single or something. What they miss is the sound of an artist who thrives on fuck-ups growing steadily more comfortable, and not just because this chronicler of failures of both the romantic and business sort is now well into her second decade as the happily married boss of her own record label, but because that singularly elegant sting she once took them all down with has weathered into the kind of critical but warm compassion that only comes with seeing a lifetime’s worth of frustrations so clearly that the other side gradually becomes visible whether you mean it to or not. And with this, perhaps, comes a newfound comfort with one’s past, with taking a look back at that girl with the crazy hair in the “Voices Carry” video and offering a buzzing little New Wave synth hook as a high five to a former self. This is how you settle into “veteran artist” status with grace, dignity and, yup, charm.
[9]

With hand gestures that show how much he Means It, Girl…

[Video][Website]
[3.33]

Jonathan Bogart: Okay, buckle in. Sertanejo is (more or less) Brazilian country music, though it has plenty in common with Mexican norteño as well, including the use of the accordion as a central instrument. It’s enjoyed massive popularity in rural Brazil since the 1930s, and more recently in cities with large populations of rural migrants. Fairly recently, a variation called sertanejo unversitário has gained mainstream and middle-class popularity, with a focus on acoustic guitars, party-friendliness, and pretty-boy sensitivity; Michel Telò is the current poster boy for this music. Luan Santana is a twenty-one-year-old sertanejo singer, and like Paula Fernandes (or her U.S. equivalent Taylor Swift), he’s more pop than traditional country, and thanks to his looks and the bathetic quiver in his voice has been lumped in with sertanejo unversitário — “Te Vivo” is a ghastly tearjerker of a ballad that you don’t need to understand the lyrics to; just watch the video and try to ignore the godawful old-man makeup. Extra point for the string arrangements, a traditional strength of Brazilian pop.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: I prefer my balladeers less adenoidal.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Every few months or so, ballads like this are released for the benefit of folks who aren’t, let’s say, active music listeners. Once the Antony-approved string intro ceases, it’s all Santana, slap-fighting the rote arpeggiation, never stopping for reflection. No Facebook newsfeed is safe. 
[1]

Mallory O’Donnell: As near as I can tell, Luan Santana is the sertanejo equivalent of the big-stroke balladeers common in the EU, few as weird or interesting as Italy’s Mina.  His US equivalent might be the current crop of teenage girls that sing jaded true-life-story ballads written by older, balder white men, few weird or interesting at all. He seems to have a (huge) audience of mostly girls younger than him, and he’s pretty damn young. What does it all mean? That in any language, on any continent, people eat this shit up with a long-handled spoon. This one’s on the only slightly-wearying side of average, despite the Myspace reference. Really, dude? Myspace?
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: My personal policy when it comes to big, sappy ballads sung in different languages is to cut them some slack because, for all I know, the actual lyrics could be amazing and I wouldn’t know (I swear Luan Santana was singing something about MySpace at points in “Te Vivo”).  Unfortunately, I found an English translation that makes the song sound not particularly interesting.  I’m sure a lot gets lost between languages, but as a piece of music this just sounds like melodramatic cheese. 
[3]

Iain Mew: With Michel Teló about to get that surely-this-shouldn’t-be-legal Syco/X Factor boost in the UK, here’s another Brazilian singer burning up the global YouTube charts. Well, appearing in the global YouTube charts, anyway – his video is not quite horrible enough for the viral potential it briefly approaches. I’m inclined to like the song as soon as the piano at the start reminds me of Britney’s “Everytime” and the string arrangement is sumptuous, but Luan does his best with his straining vocals to kill off the appeal of both.
[4]

Will Adams: Marks for commitment, but Luan’s lackluster vocals and basic piano arpeggios fail to propel this beyond the high school talent show stage in which this exists.
[3]

John Seroff: Remember that scene at the start of Up that always makes you bawl? Okay, start there and then give Ellie a miscarriage and cancer (in that order), throw in the dog from Marley and Me, braise in clarified juices of Windham Hill, Precious Moments and lighter fluid and have Adam Lambert’s straight and less talented cousin serve the whole mess, tepid and unkindled, in Portuguese. Gonna take a whole lotta heartbreak to make that welcome at the table.
[4]

Alfred Soto: The Ryan Tedder ethos is a multinational threat, even as logorrhea.
[4]

With the most pointlessly Poltergeisty video this week…

[Video][Website]
[4.44]

Brad Shoup: Is there an antonym for earworm?
[1]

John Seroff: Kat and I were the only two to find something worthwhile in Two Door’s last Singles offering and, though my enthusiasm is somewhat tempered by the lack of a memorable hook, I’m still willing to stand by this one as well.  “Sleep Alone” gets by on a running start and a persistent kick drum; something about the trebly tenor of lead singer Alex Trimble’s delivery bypasses my long-held “white guy with guitar” prejudice.  It’s music I’d welcome in a strange bar as a secret handshake that says “we’re a bit cooler than we look”. 
[7]

Will Adams: This is more of the same. “The same” here means “catchy, up-tempo, synth-imbued rock with surfing guitar lines, all dusted with a vocal that teeters on a precipice.” I won’t complain for now.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: Two Door Cinema Club are a great festival act, their fluffy take on Bloc-Party-esque Britrock working best when they have hundreds of people jumping up and down to their music.  I imagine “Sleep Alone” would wow the same crowds I watched go batshit crazy for every single song these guys played, what with the continuous propulsion and easy-to-shout lyrics.  Unfortunately, coming out of headphones, this fails to leave much of a mark beyond “that was alright.”
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: This is either an Owl City song for those who liken his collaboration with Carly Rae Jepsen to Coke switching to high fructose corn syrup, or an I Am Kloot song without accents. One of these is quite listenable.
[5]

Anthony Easton: I thought it was impossible for the song to be any more precious than the band’s name — but the mewling like a kitten who has had their milk taken away  from them accomplishes the task. 
[3]

Alfred Soto: “We know what we see/cuz we’re always fast asleep” the singer avers over pretty six-string ripples, fully aware that a battalion of undistinguished guitar bands will sleepwalk into English homes.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: If the pale, watery youth of Britain wish to inflict this self-imitation on their own ears, that’s their business. I don’t see why I should be bothered about it.
[4]

Iain Mew: As the owner of multiple albums by the likes of Haven and Lowgold I feel like I’m not in a place to be too harsh on low-impact indie, but at least they had misery as some kind of feature. Also they were midtable followers of bigger bands I liked more, but the current lot like these guys and Bombay Bicycle Club are somehow the big bands themselves, and yet I can’t grab hold of anything to feel anything about in most of their songs. It makes me feel old and a bit sad because I’ve spent so long reading people accusing bands I liked of being beige non-music and this is the first time that I find myself thinking it about anyone.
[5]