With her early albums, Melissa Etheridge helped erase the last bit of novelty from the sight of a girl with a guitar. She wasn’t the first female rock star – not by a long shot – but unlike a lot of her forebears, she didn’t really have an image: She wasn’t cute like the Bangles, or vaguely threatening like Joan Jett, or a hippie intellectual like Joni Mitchell. She was just a musician who happened to be a woman, and one with a knack for combining easily identifiable messages with big, broad, radio-ready melodies. Remember “Come to My Window”? Of course you do.
Seventeen years later, Etheridge isn’t quite the radio mainstay she once was, but she’s still doing exactly what she’s always done – to a fault, in fact. The last decade has seen her release a pair of live albums, a Christmas album, and a greatest hits collection, in addition to four albums of new material – and Fearless Love, her latest, suggests it might be time for a vacation. It’s certainly a step back from 2007’s The Awakening, which found her using those reach-for-the-sky choruses in service of a spiritual, autobiographical song cycle; in contrast, Fearless Love comes loaded for bear with a dozen tracks of platitudes as corny as its title.
Still, there’s something heartwarming about a performer this unflinchingly sincere, especially in the midst of such a cynical, irony-drenched era for music. Even when Etheridge is singing hoary lines like “Long nights in the small room with the big dreams / Oh, Indiana,” there’s never any doubt that she really means what she’s saying. Maybe next time, she’ll come up with a message worthy of that conviction. (Island 2010)
“Steamboat Willie”-style insects running a freakish post-apocalyptic assembly line. There is no other way to say it: this is one of the creepiest videos we’ve ever seen. Cool, but creepy.
The song, though, is one of our favorites from Editors’ most recent album, In This Light and On This Evening. Kind of like a modern-day “Being Boiled”…with eyeball-removing insects. Yikes.
Embedding is disabled for us American Anglophiles, so to see the video, you’ll have to click here. Trust us, it’s worth a look. Bonus points if you go back for seconds.
In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I do not for one second understand the critical and music geek slurpfest that LCD Soundsystem has basked in since its inception. And the thing is, I should understand it. They like the same bands I like. They play the kind of music I like to listen to. But I do not like LCD Soundsystem. From where I’m standing, they are quite possibly the most overrated band alive today. Indeed, this is how I ended my review of their last album, Sound of Silver:
“The band never rises above their influences, and James Murphy can’t sing. In the end, though, none of that matters. All that matters is that LCD Soundsystem is cool, and if you like them, then you’re cool, too.”
So…are you cool?
Fortunately, I gave up on being cool a few years ago, and let me tell you, that was a wonderful thing. Trying to stay hip is hard – there is a very popular blogger whose name I could cite as an example of someone bending over backwards to maintain their hipster cred, but I won’t; she’ll find out the hard way soon enough – and here’s the thing that aging, former hipsters don’t tell you: you’d be amazed to discover how much better music sounds when you stop acting so pious and elitist about it. Does that mean I’ve lowered my standards? Not at all. It simply means that I couldn’t care less what anyone thinks of my musical tastes anymore. And that includes anyone tempted to use the comment section below to tell me how stupid I am, so don’t waste your time.
Now, back to LCD Soundsystem, the cool band of the moment. This is the second one-take video I’ve seen this week (Slow Club’s is the other), showing that the OK Go ripple effect is in full swing. The clip begins amusingly enough, with the aforementioned singer who can’t sing standing in front of a test pattern screen, trying to sing while guys in animal costumes (dogs? Panda bears?) pester Murphy, Al Doyle (at least I think it’s Doyle) and Nancy Whang as they try to sing along to the track. Pretty soon, the inappropriate touching gives way to truly obnoxious behavior. Nancy gets egged, but not before getting a bullhorn blasted in her ear. Doyle gets hit with fire extinguishers, stripped and has trash dumped on him. Murphy and Whang are duct taped together and written on with markers. The subtext is not hard to read: LCD Soundsystem are the drunk girls, and the guys in suits are frat boy douchebags. The video ends with everyone partying and completely defacing the set.
The clip will definitely get people talking, and while I get and appreciate the point it’s trying to make, it’s still pretty ugly. Besides, the video’s moral, as it were, will be lost on the majority of its audience anyway. Doyle is even seen drinking with the animals at the end, which sends all sorts of mixed messages. Do the drunk girls deserve what they get? Hmmmm.
Ah, but no one’s going to talk about the video’s message. All anyone cares about is that this band that is perceived as cool made a “controversial” video that got the blogosphere buzzing. Their fans will line up to tell them how wonderful they are, and the press will say that it’s the best record since their last record. And in the end, I’m aware that I’m contributing to this phenomenon, even though this piece is in dissent.
But for God’s sake, man, someone had to step up and say it – LCD Soundsystem are just not that good. They probably could be, if they tried a little harder. But this, this is just piss take music, all arch, pretend irony and posturing without an ounce of genuine emotion. If some band with a lower hipster rating released this song, everyone would say it was shit. And the song isn’t shit, per se, but it’s not awesome, or even good. It’s just music by a band lucky enough to be popular with the cool kids. Imagine how popular they’d be if they actually put some effort into it.
If there’s a more consistent hard rock band out there than Sevendust, I sure haven’t found them. These guys, even after losing a founding member in Clint Lowery (who makes his studio return here), for five years, continue to produce stellar material, and Cold Day Memory should please their ever-growing fan base. Though not quite as solid as 2001’s Animosity (their masterpiece, in my opinion) or the much-angrier Home, this release deserves to be in the upper echelon of the Sevendust catalog.
Faithful fans know these cats always start an album off with a bang, and “Splinter” is no exception. Clint Lowery, returning after five years off to work with Dark New Day and Korn, makes his presence immediately felt with superb background vocals and his signature guitar riffs. “Forever,” the first song from the album officially released online, is a beast unto itself. Lowery, along with guitarist John Connolly, bassist Vinnie Hornsby, and drummer Morgan Rose, are as tight rhythmically as I’ve ever heard them. It’s as if Lowery never left. The signature melodic choruses really kick into gear on songs such as “Unraveling” (the first single), “Last Breath,” “Confessions,” and “Here and Now.”
The true separator for Sevendust over the years has been singer Lajon Witherspoon. He’s had the most soulful and diverse voice in the genre since the band burst onto the scene in the late ’90s, and he hasn’t lost a step on Cold Day Memory. He’s what makes the band’s sudden changes between brutal and beautiful possible – and successful.
Fans as well as the uninitiated will find little to complain about with this release. A part of me was really hoping for something a little more experimental – what they did with “Burn” on Alpha was truly transcendent for them, and I’d love to see them build upon it at some point – but nevertheless we still have another dozen solid Sevendust songs. That alone is superior to a lot of the other stuff out there. (7Bros. Records/ILG)
The ’90s were dark days for the hard rock bands that made their bones in the previous decade. Some of them may have achieved their greatest chart success between 1990 and 1993, but that owes more to the dawning of the Soundscan era than the band’s Q factor. There is a story about A&R reps calling their bands on the road when Nirvana’s Nevermind went supernova, telling them, “Come on home, boys. It’s over.” There was simply no room for hair metal in the new grunge order.
And who should come to hair metal’s rescue but…Mickey Rourke. As former wrestling superstar Randy “The Ram” Robinson in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler,” Rourke gave voice to the frustrations of more than a few disgruntled rock hounds when he dismissively observed how “that Cobain pussy had to come along and ruin it all.” Of course, this rallying cry came about a decade too late, as most of the bands from the era had either burned out (Motley Crue), gone the reality TV route (Poison), or morphed into bitter codgers, like Warrant’s Jani “I’m the ‘Cherry Pie’ guy” Lane.
Which brings us to Ratt, a band 20 years removed from their last gold album and a good 25 years removed from their last really good album. (“Way Cool Jr.” was fun, but let’s be honest here, people.) Infighting and drugs have dominated the band’s existence since 1992 – guitarist Robbin Crosby died of an overdose in 2006 – but Stephen Pearcy, Warren DiMartini and Bobby Blotzer have circled the wagons with two new members to make Infestation, the band’s first album in 11 years and a no-nonsense throwback to the band’s early ’80s glory days. Randy the Ram would have loved this record.
With nary a power ballad in sight, Ratt tears through these 11 songs like they’re running from the Devil himself. Similarities to earlier Ratt songs are unavoidable, as “Look Out Below” bears resemblance to “Slip of the Lip,” and “Best of Me” is this album’s “I Want a Woman.” Yes, the song titles (“Last Call,” “Garden of Eden,” “Take a Big Bite”) would empty the Rock Cliche Police’s ticket book, and Pearcy’s voice is a little worse for wear. (Great understatement, that.) Still, weathered or not, Pearcy has one of the most unique voices of the ’80s hard rock scene, even if he’s lost an octave off the top, and the songwriting here is surprisingly good. Anyone who misses sure-as-shit guitar solos and rock bands who just want to have a good time will consider Infestation a sight for sore ears. In truth, it’s a three-star album, but they get an extra half-star for exceeding our expectations so greatly. (Roadrunner 2010)
