The Singles Jukebox

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

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[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 Mew: 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.
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