Musing

Arcade Fire's The Suburbs Editor's Note: This is the 5th in a weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2010. New reviews go up every weekend through the end of the year. Many reviews of this album sound disappointed. Many reviews of this album make comparisons to their first, best-of-its-decade album. Many reviews remark that there are a number of great tracks on this album with other tracks between those that are merely good. This is one of those reviews. Oddly, most of those same reviews adore "Empty Room." I am baffled as strongly by those reactions as I agree with the others. I'll go one step further and admit that if it was up to me, "Month of May" and "Suburban War" would have been left off of the album entirely and used as b-sides. That creates problems in thematic flow, but at least the album wouldn't feel like it drags after you hit 12 tracks or so. Arcade Fire aimed to show us the drudgery of suburban lif...

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, th...

Jakob Dylan's Women and Country It's interesting to see the junior Dylan come full circle in his choice of musical expressions. The last time we heard something with the sort of bluesy Americana that the senior Dylan is known for was the first time we heard something from The Wallflowers (their criminally overlooked, self-titled debut album). It's certainly a big step away from his first solo album, which was sparse, but considerably lighter in both tone and subject. Biggest pro? I'm a sucker for the brass on this album, particularly "Lend a Hand" and "Standing Eight Count." It reminds me a bit of AB's Bowl of Fire. Biggest con? If the brass is awesome, the bass is awful. I think it was mixed far too high, which forces his vocals too far back. With a low raspy voice like his, you have to be very careful not to lose him in the mix. This was the single biggest factor that brought the album down as far as it is. Album highlight: The opening...

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Beat the Devil's Tattoo Don't get me wrong - I like 'em long. When I sit down to listen to an album, I want it to monopolize my attention for about 50 minutes at a time. Less than that and I feel cheated, although there's certainly some adjustments to be made for the quality of the material. Longer than that...well, you'd better bring everything you've got and pay even more attention to the flow of the songs than I do. Unfortunately, this album falls into this latter category. Some people say Be Here Now needed a far heavier hand when it came to keeping the songs in check, but I disagree. Only "Magic Pie" comes close to needing an edit, and it's hardly the longest song on the album. BRMC's newest album starts to sound oddly repetitive by the fifth or sixth track and it's hard to say if it's due to track length (half are 5 minutes or longer, ending with a 10 minute grinder that could have been 3 mi...

Linkin Park's A Thousand Suns It's easy to listen to this album all the way through without realizing that it has finished. This is both good and bad - good, because the flow of the songs is pretty smooth; bad, because it's hard to think back on the last 45 minutes and pick out your favorite tracks. Like Rob Thomas's cradlesong last year, I've already decided that this would be a much better album if I re-tracked it myself. "Overindulgence in the political spectrum" and "too many short, instrumental tracks" seems to have taken the focus away from writing songs that truly stand out for more than strong words. Album highlight: There's a breakdown in "Iridescent" that did manage to give me chills the first time I heard it. Do you feel cold and lost in desperation? You build up hope, but failure's all you've known. Remember all the sadness and frustration And let it go. Let it go.

Maybe there was too much hype leading into this album. Maybe the preponderance of positive reviews for certain tracks heightened expectations unrealistically. Maybe it is just a little too happy. Whatever the reason, I can't help but get up out of The Chair with a head-scratching feeling disappointment. Sides A/B are upbeat. Very upbeat from the same band that brought Funeral to the world in aural orgasm of chamber pop. And very upbeat from the same band that created an epic out of cynicism and panic with Neon Bible . Sides C/D travel back into that dark realm, but in settings with more sparse instrumentation than they've used in the past. On one hand, it's nice to hear some of the songs given a chance to breathe. On the other, isn't Arcade Fire defined by walls of orchestral bombast? A few more listens will help. I'm sure it will find a niche mood where I'm both craving AF and looking for something that's only occasionally depressing. *Note: It...

When I say that I intend to be really quick, it means I just want you to answer my question and let me get back to work. It doesn't mean I don't like you. It doesn't mean that I don't care about what you did this weekend. But honestly, my memory is shit. I'll probably forget the answer to the question I asked before I get back to my cubicle. So give it to me hard and fast: yes or no; do it or don't; black, white, or "what the fuck?" - in short - 1) Answer the question, and 2) Shut your piehole. Don't pretend you don't see this line. Yes, that's right, the line you just sauntered past on your way to the just-opened self-service checkout lane at the grocery store. There's 12 people waiting in one line right between the two sets of checkout register and you don't think someone's waiting for the register you just pounced on? Your baby is not so cute that I want to let you check out ahead of me. [To top it all off, the woman ...