Top Ten Albums of 2010 - #07
Margot & the Nuclear So-and-So's Buzzard
The acoustic, back-porch recordings released to YouTube while the band was finishing the record got a lot of people excited, and I was definitely one of them. I was thrilled that they were finally out of the messy situation with Sony/Epic and able to release the album with an honest track listing. But the turnover of band members has taken that defining Margot quality away and left a talented but hardly-remarkable ensemble.
It's ironic: in one of the videos mentioned above, they play a slow and haunting version of Will You Love Me Forever?, which ends with Edwards remarking "If I'd have recorded that one like that, it would probably make me some money, maybe." Sadly, he's right. The album version is layered with really average guitar lines and played much faster, which takes away from the yearning tonal quality that the song should have.
Again, like the last albums, I'm being really picky. As a whole, the album is better than the average rock albums on the shelf today. My disappointment stems from the band being so much less than it used to be. With that said, "Birds," "New York City Hotel Blues," and "Lunatic, Lunatic, Lunatic" are all worth a listen or three. And early next year, we're told to expect an EP of reworked versions of a couple of the songs that landed on Buzzard, as well as some other tracks that didn't make the cut. Most importantly, there was one solitary post a while back that indicated that a far more acoustic album was being considered as their fourth album with a very quick turn-around (the implication was this coming winter/spring).
Album highlight: "New York City Hotel Blues" is a free download on Amazon right now. Grab it!
The acoustic, back-porch recordings released to YouTube while the band was finishing the record got a lot of people excited, and I was definitely one of them. I was thrilled that they were finally out of the messy situation with Sony/Epic and able to release the album with an honest track listing. But the turnover of band members has taken that defining Margot quality away and left a talented but hardly-remarkable ensemble.It's ironic: in one of the videos mentioned above, they play a slow and haunting version of Will You Love Me Forever?, which ends with Edwards remarking "If I'd have recorded that one like that, it would probably make me some money, maybe." Sadly, he's right. The album version is layered with really average guitar lines and played much faster, which takes away from the yearning tonal quality that the song should have.
Again, like the last albums, I'm being really picky. As a whole, the album is better than the average rock albums on the shelf today. My disappointment stems from the band being so much less than it used to be. With that said, "Birds," "New York City Hotel Blues," and "Lunatic, Lunatic, Lunatic" are all worth a listen or three. And early next year, we're told to expect an EP of reworked versions of a couple of the songs that landed on Buzzard, as well as some other tracks that didn't make the cut. Most importantly, there was one solitary post a while back that indicated that a far more acoustic album was being considered as their fourth album with a very quick turn-around (the implication was this coming winter/spring).
Album highlight: "New York City Hotel Blues" is a free download on Amazon right now. Grab it!
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