Review #4: Daft Punk

Daft Punk-“Human After All”
(Virgin)
5 out of 10

Picture links to Daft Punk's website and was nicked off geedorah.com

Oh, how I love Daft Punk with a passion. What unbelievable genius has come from these two man/musical robots by the heavenly names of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (How many musicians do you know that are worthy of FOUR NAMES?!?!?) They wrote the book on rave culture on 1997’s “Homework”, took a four year break and then wrote the book on pop music (or electro-pop balladeering, or even anime soundtracks if you prefer to get really specific) on 2001’s “Discovery”. Oh, the minds of these two genius things during these 4-5 years. Now, if you’ve been doing the math here, another four year break from 2001 brings our heroes to give us another nugget of auditory heaven in the year 2005 Anno Domini, which we just so happen to be engorged in as I type this. And, of course, we do get another…uh, interesting nugget from the boys.
Enter March 15, 2005. I get out of work on this day to find that my mum, fully knowing of my anticipation of this event, has already bought me a copy of this heralded disc, “Human After All”. Expecting the best, I eagerly open the CD and shove it in the CD player. The opening title track plays and I am simply giddy. This track gets me moving like the Daft jams of the past. Powered by what sounds like a cross between a howling guitar and a severely mangled vocal sample, the melody proceeds to habituate itself within the deep depths of my mind. For this five minutes and twenty seconds, I am floored with excitement. The bar is set high for the next track, “Prime Time Of Your Life”. The title suggests something much different from the song itself. The title of the song is sung in another mangled vocal sample backed by a fuzzy drum beat, a partnership that melts together to form an industrial symphony of humming and whirring that speeds up like an accelerating train. Not very Daft of you, my friends, but I’ll take it. Something fresh and different, I figure.
That optimism would fall rapidly into a pool of disappointment for the rest of the experience, starting with “Robot Rock”, which has become, by a staggering stroke of idiocy, the first single. Another title singing vocal sample. For the first and certainly not the last time in the disc, repetition makes a guest appearance. It even came complete with terrible guitar.
Another saddening trend in the disc is that there’s a shocking influence of industrial rock here. “Steam Machine” sounds like a bad Nine Inch Nails track, and I’m not even fond of Mr. Reznor’s work. “The Brainwasher” loops a headbanging rhythm that’s seemingly entertaining, yet still fairly depressing. “Television Rules The Nation” has a similar effect. To throw salt in these painful wounds, they just had to try to reproduce their best track, “Harder Better Faster Stronger”, in the absurd “Technologic”.
Oh, it doesn’t stop there. You may have remembered the ballads on “Discovery”, you know, the ones with great vocals from Daft Punk and Romanthony that conveyed an innocent naïveté in the subject of love? Forget about that. There are two stabs at ballads here, “Make Love” and “Emotion”. Instead of making our heart melt while we shake our collective badonkadonks like you did on “Discovery”, why don’t you guys just take a couple of your little NIN-inspired tracks and slow them down! Great job! You’re really making me want to cuddle with someone now!
Seriously though, these two tracks are probably the most tragic of anything in their entire catalogue, or possibly even anything they have ever done in any field anywhere in their whole entire lives. “Make Love” does not make me want to make love, it just makes me want to skip past five minutes of lazy piano. Even worse, “Emotion” does not evoke one single emotion, instead it makes me end the disc prematurely so that I don’t have to endure SEVEN MINUTES of the song title being looped once again.
Thankfully, the boys have issued an explanation/subtle apology in the liner notes, and I quote: “Paris, September 13 to November 9, 2004.” Do the math there. If this is when the disc was recorded, that means it took roughly three weeks to create it. Three weeks! This small fragment of information puts images in my mind of the duo recording songs at 3 A.M. in a bleak apartment, possibly depressed. I may be wrong, true, but this is just my mental image. If you take four years off and take three weeks to record a disappointing album, it really makes me question what the world you’ve been doing for the past 3 years and 49 weeks. This also gives the album a higher score then it would have been had it taken longer to record since the first two tracks are pretty damn good, and to create two cracking tracks in three weeks when you may be in a terrible mental condition is an impressive achievement.
I end with these words: Thomas and Guy-Manuel, sort everything out and start coming up with ideas for 2009. And if you really need to, don’t hesitate to call that Romanthony guy!

Key Tracks: "Human After All", "Prime Time Of Your Life"

Review #3: Kings Of Leon

Kings of Leon-“Aha Shake Heartbreak”
(RCA)
6 out of 10

Photo links to KOL's site and was nicked off BMG

Following the release of the Kings Of Leon’s 2003 release “Youth And Young Manhood”, many critics were quick to bill the Kings as new post-punk mavericks, or the “Southern Strokes”. Meanwhile, following the release of the Kings’ 2005 effort, “Aha Shake Heartbreak”, I strongly disagree with this labeling, and as a Strokes fan, frankly, I’m a tad insulted.
Instead of placing the Kings in the post-punk category in which they would be awkwardly misplaced, I prefer to think of the Kings as the saviors of a floundering alt-country genre. As a band containing three brothers raised by a traveling evangelist in Nashville (plus one cousin from Oklahoma), they seem to be born for that role. “Aha” proves this with a smoky yet decadently fun sound; however, it’s not without its’ clumsy moments.
The best thing about this album is that the instrumentals do indeed echo the Strokes most of the time. The Kings are at their best here when this guitar expertise is displayed. Songs like “The Bucket”, “King Of The Rodeo”, “Taper Jean Girl”, and “Velvet Snow” all deliver fast-paced, 3 A.M. barroom square-dance fun.
Another great track on the album is “Milk”, which, although misplaced, creates a strange feeling. It sounds overly dramatic at first, but after a couple listens this looming stalker song has a powerful feel of desperation. Caleb Followill howls in a manner that fits the song’s narrator, a lovesick aging man with a comb-over. It doesn’t fit too well on this CD, but it’s still oddly attractive.
As much as instrumentals are uniformly impressive throughout the disc, the lyrics are equally absurd and nonsensical. Intentional or not, it hurts the album’s poignant moments. (Honestly, Caleb, is it absolutely, positively vital that we know you hate your lady friend’s “Japanese scream”, whatever the hell that is.)
And speaking of poignant moments, they have never been wrecked in a more effective way than in “Day Old Blues”. It starts decently enough, with flowing acoustic guitar below Caleb lamenting about lord-knows-what. But then the “hook” had to come. The electric guitar sets in and in a unnecessarily high-pitched voice, Caleb wails the title of the song in a fluttering tone of voice sure to nauseate anyone.

I love the Kings’ trademark sound to death, but for such a talented group of musicians I’m shocked that they can’t write better songs and fully capitalize on the southern bravado that they only demonstrate some of the time.

Key Tracks: "The Bucket", "Milk", "King Of The Rodeo"

Review #2: Chemical Brothers

The Chemical Brothers- “Push The Button”
(Astralwerks)
8 out of 10

Picture links to Chemical Brothers' website and was nicked from Amazon.com

I was quite excited when I heard the first single off “Push The Button”, “Galvanize”. The Chemical Brothers, a.k.a. Manchester, England big-beat veterans Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands, have created a sound for themselves, which I like to describe as an ornate, grandiose acid-house. But “Galvanize” was nothing like this. It was more of a hip-hop oriented track with a slight middle-eastern flavor and an impressive guest appearance from Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest. I loved it initially, but then I remembered it was a Chemical Brothers track. Wha?!?!?
My anticipation towards the release of “Push The Button” was fueled by this slight deception, yet at the same time I was afraid that the whole album would have this totally different feeling to it. Oh, did it ever. But, after a few listens, I discovered I had absolutely nothing to be scared of.
The album starts beautifully, with “Galvanize”, a jittery track called “The Boxer” featuring a spastic appearance from the Charlatans’ Tim Burgess, and the pumping rave anthem “Believe” featuring Kele Okereke of the much-hyped, up-and-coming UK band Bloc Party. Other gems on the album include the frisky “Come Inside”, quirky “The Big Jump”, and a surprisingly impressive slow-paced, vocally driven tune entitled “Close Your Eyes”. Another well-done middle eastern track is found in “Shake Break Bounce”, which is followed by a throwback to the Chems’ glory days, “Marvo Ging”, which just screams “Use me in a car ad ASAP! I’ll make anything seem cool!”
The effort’s not without it’s faults though. “Hold Tight London” is a snoozer, much like the album closer, “Surface To Air”. And I am just flat out embarrassed by “Left Right”, a political anthem with a tacky beat that relies heavily on guest rapper Anwar Superstar. It sounds sadly like it was produced by Jazze Pha or something. I guess some musicians are better off leaving political messages behind in their music.
The pluses outweigh the minuses heavily however, which leaves “Push The Button” as a pleasing listen for any electronica fan. If you’re looking to introduce yourself to the Chems, though, I would recommend much more 1997’s “Dig Your Own Hole” or maybe 1999’s “Surrender”.

Key Tracks: "Believe", "Close Your Eyes", "Marvo Ging"

The First Review

(Note: Welcome to my terrible blog! Let's start off with an uppity, ass-kissing review, shall we? Excuse the appearance for a while, by the way, i'm going to start off with some previously written reviews from which my upcoming piece in The Lancer Spirit will be modeled after...those two will be coming soon. But for the time being...Enjoy!)

Graham Coxon-“Happiness in Magazines”

(Transcopic/Astralwerks)

10 out of 10

Photo links to Graham Coxon's website and was nicked off Astralwerks' website

Graham Coxon was the guitarist in Blur. For some, this means an awful lot. It means that Graham Coxon was the guitar technician who flaunted his gear-geekish skills through 6 great albums from 1991 to 1999. Sadly though, for most, this daunting credential doesn’t mean much at all, specifically to about 95% of Americans. So, on “Happiness In Magazines”, Graham’s first solo effort to be widely released in the States thanks to indie ultra-label Astralwerks, Graham Coxon has a clean sheet to write on and a reputation that puts him back to square one in the U.S. of A. Things were not always so easy on the solo front for Graham. On four previous solo albums ranging from 1998 to 2002, Graham created a gritty low-fi sound that was loved by few other than himself. He had been viewed as an exclusively DIY artist, who may have stripped down his music in spite of Blur, who, in recording 2003’s Think Tank without him, were utilizing celebrity producers like Fatboy Slim and William Orbit. For “Happiness”, however, Graham brought back long-time Blur producer Stephen Street and created an effort on par with some of Blur’s most brilliant recordings. Coxon sheds his shy-guy image and plays pool-hustling axe master on tunes like the delightfully socialite “Don’t Be A Stranger”, the lady-killing “Spectacular” and “No Good Time”, and bouncy turn-it-up-to-11 punk anthems “Freakin’ Out”, “People Of The Earth”, and “Right To Pop” On the album, however, you still get the vulnerable, wallflower Graham, a role he also plays very well. He laments the loss of a woman he depends on heavily on the bluesy “Girl Done Gone”, daydreams on the serene tracks “All Over Me” and “Are You Ready”, and demonstrates exhaustion with his aggressive peers on the lighthearted “Bottom Bunk”. Coxon covers the full spectrum of his personality and creates an album full of clever songwriting and timeless melodies on “Happiness in Magazines”, an album that, in a perfect world, would be a rock classic. If you haven’t heard of Coxon, I would strongly recommend discovering him.

Key Tracks: "Freakin' Out", "Don't Be A Stranger", "People Of The Earth", "Right To Pop!"