Albums for the Week of June 20, 2010

In preparation for the upcoming Faith No More show in New York, I thought I'd get my chops up:

1) DJ Shadow - Endtroducing... - 1996

2) Eminem - Recovery - 2010

3) Faith No More - We Care A Lot - 1985

4) Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual - 1990

Although I am not listening to it this week, I recommended Aesop Rock's Labor Days to Doom Guild.

I also noticed that I'm one album shy from officially representing four decades of music this week, but I'll let Eminem's past fame and glory get the oughties in on a technicality. 

 Enjoy.

Albums for the Week of June 13, 2010

Life got busy. Lots of trips out of town, I'm planning a wedding, and the machines in my life are starting to break down (car, lawnmower, computer, etc.). So here was my soundtrack to the latest week of multi-tasking:

1) Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath - 1970

2) The Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works - 2007 (this week's Doom Guild pick)

3) Megadeth - Peace Sells...But Who's Buying? - 1986

4) Sleigh Bells - Treats - 2010

I didn't intend for this result, but I am quite pleased with the week of metal the universe has placed before me.

Albums for the Week of June 6, 2010

As we kick off National Dairy Month, as well as Gay Pride Month, I will be listening to the following:

1) The National - High Violet - 2010

2) Nine Inch Nails - Broken / Fixed - 1992

3) Tim Fite - Fair Ain't Fair - 2008 (This week's Doom Guild pick)

4) Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - 2002

I'm only mildly familiar with The National, and Nine Inch Nails laid part of the soundtrack of my 1994 year, but the rest of this week's picks are first-evers for me. I'm fairly certain that Nine Inch Nails is the only one who will scream 'fist fuck' on more than one song.

Here's to a good week.

Dead and Bloated: A Love Letter to 2010-era Stone Temple Pilots

Dear Scott, Robert, Dean, and Eric:

I was in 7th grade when you released Core, and I didn't care that the critics called you 'Stone Temple Pearl Jam.' I still cite 'Plush' as one of my all time favorite songs. I bought Purple as soon as it came out, and I consider it one of my 'perfect' albums (no songs shall ever be skipped, for a 'perfect' album is a complete journey, from start to finish).

Tiny Music did not make the splash that it should have, but Scott's battle with heroin at the time was partly to blame. No. 4, another underrated effort scorned yet again by Scott's drug addiction, sported one of your finest singles ('Sour Girl'). Even the off-kilter Shangri-La-Dee-Da had its pleasing moments.

I am so enamored by you, that I don't even care that your latest album sounds a lot like junior varsity material written for and rejected by Aerosmith. We have a history, and I still bask in the warmth of all of our memories, good and bad.

I cherish you and all of your imperfections and have never looked back. Sure, you are incredibly referential, I will never score any bragging rights for my fandom, and I'd be shocked if you ever received a nomination to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But that's OK with me -- I have been forever charmed by your funny little band.

So again, thank you for all of the years, the tunes, and for contributing to part of the soundtrack of my life so far. I'm so happy you guys are back together and making music again, even if your new music kind of seems like homogenized pap. You guys will always have a loyal fan in me.

Hugs and Kisses,

-A

This Post Has No Title

Elton John is kicking my ass today. This dude is his own kind of bad ass rock star. I'm also fairly certain that if there was no Elton John, there would be no Guns N' Roses.

On that note, I'm off to go and see if anyone's every done a mash up of 'Bennie and the Jets' and 'Welcome to the Jungle.' Think about it for a second...it could totally work.

Review to follow...eventually.

Slipknot - Vol.3 (The Subliminal Verses) - 2004 - "...Welcome to annihilation."

For their third album, nu metal's masked minstrels of mayhem dial back on the aggro overdrive and strive to add more dimension and variety to their usual cacophonous onslaught of speed and fury.

First and foremost, Slipknot is a band of extremes. At the time of recording Vol. 3, this band featured nine members (founding member and bassist Paul Gray died on May 24, 2010). They wear creepy masks that resemble something out of a Wes Craven nightmare. They also play songs that would make a pedophile blush at speeds that seem to clock in at about 1,000bpm. For Vol. 3, Slipknot bunkered down in a haunted Los Angeles mansion (where Blood Sugar Sex Magik was recorded) and summoned mega producer Rick Rubin (Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash, Danzig, System of a Down, etc.) to ensure the quality of their most adventurous effort yet.  

As it turns out, these brutal ogres from Iowa have hearts of gold after all. Don't get me wrong -- these guys are still brutal on Vol. 3. Old skool fans will definitely find the decay, pain, hurt, and the demonic stuff here (...'Fingers on your skin, let me savage in...' etc.). However, you will also find melody, harmonies ('Circle' and 'Vermillion, Pt. 2' especially), acoustic guitars and a few medium paced tempos. There's even catchy choruses for songs that sound like something getting sodomized by a cement mixer. And it works -- there is a nice enough flow among the hard-hard-soft-hard-hard-soft song sequence. Vol. 3 is pretty enough for the less-than-brutal souls, but it also aims to not alienate the arm-carving types. My own personal confession after listening to this album? I actually got more enjoyment watching these guys slow it down...it's pretty fucking good and spooky at times (check out the album closer 'Danger - Keep Away'). 

Constructive comment time -- the lyrical approach on Vol. 3 is utterly ridiculous. Too much of the album's lyrics utilized some sort of clarity/conflict/contradictory solution technique. I'll demonstrate:

'...I am all, but what am I...?'

'...My future seems like one big past...'

'...The lies that I owned, now own me...'

'...Now as far as I know, I don't know anything...'

Just for giggles, one of the above lines is made up by me (I'll never tell which one), the other three are honest to god quotes from Vol. 3. After realizing this technique four or so songs in, it became a personal joke to see if singer Corey Taylor would keep it up. Boy, did he ever. This realization yielded a heavy point loss on this album for me. This swill reads like Hot Topic spiral notebook high school poetry. I also just about shit my wagon when I heard a gutteral, 'JUST LOVE ME!' towards the end of the album. Maybe I missed the point, but when I scratched the surface too deeply, Vol. 3 felt less like a brave new step and more like inane melodrama.

I'm not ashamed to admit that despite its hilarious flaws, I enjoyed this album. Granted, I'm a headbanging drama nerd from the '90's, so I may be a part of Vol. 3's key demographic. Some may approach this album with trepidation ('Danger'), others may be repelled by its presentation or effect ('Keep Away'). But remember, this album has a tender side ('...just love me?'). Maybe what Slipknot needs most of all is a few hugs and a kitty.

In memory of Paul Gray

April 8, 1972 - May 24, 2010  

Mike Patton - Mondo Cane - 2010 - "...I don't need a landowner to harvest coffee."

Never one to get comfortable or to repeat himself, Mike Patton's latest effort comes to us in the form of 1960's Italian pop tunes, backed by a full orchestra, and sung almost completely in Italian.

If you are unfamiliar with Mike Patton, he gained fame as the frontman of Faith No More, and then went on to front a plethora of other projects (I briefly discussed this in a previous post), the multitude of which has defined Patton's artistic style ever since. He also lived in Italy for a few years, where he learned to speak Italian fluently. In what feels a bit like an homage to the country, the culture, the genre, or maybe all of the above, Patton assembled an all-Italian orchestra (65 members...no small feat), a Neopolitan conductor, and played three live shows to Italian audiences. The resulting live recordings were mixed and massaged in the studio, and ultimately released as Mondo Cane (that's pronounced Mondo Car-nay...go ahead and give it a whirl).

I know nothing in Italian. Undaunted, I plunged into this album with no external resources to guide me through -- I truly wanted to get irretrievably lost in translation. As it turns out, getting lost was quite easy, so I resigned myself to enjoy an album in a way I rarely do -- by emotional feel alone. I came out of the first few spins not overwhelmingly impressed, but pleased with the results. These are pop tunes, so everything felt inviting and catchy (especially the awesomely visceral 'Urlo Negro'). There's even one song ('Deep Down') that features some English singing (just those two words, but they do get repeated quite a bit). My prevailing thought after a few spins was that most, if not all of the songs dealt with love or chicks or something like that. I mean, these are Italian tunes after all.

Once I felt like I got the gist of things, I sought out translations to all of the tunes to see if I would enjoy the album any differently. 'As it turns out, 'mondo cane' translates to 'a dog's world,' and as Mike Patton recently stated in an interview about the album, 'If I really had to boil it down, [Monde Cane]’s about love and loss, heartbreak, and the triumph of suffering.' Sure enough, all but one of these songs (once again, the violently infectious 'Urlo Negro') deal with falling in love, hooking up, or breaking up. Reflecting back on my Italian-only listens, I also came to appreciate Patton's ability to sing with so much emotion in a foreign language. Even though I had no clue what he was so croony about the first few times around, as I suspected above, most of these songs deal in matters of the heart. But don't get me wrong -- these are not schmoopy saccharine love ballads. Yet Patton definitely infuses all of the songs with passion, so much that an English translation is not all that necessary to get an appreciable drift of what's going on. 

The end sum of Mondo Cane for me though, was that there were no hidden meanings to decipher in the lyrics. Learning the words in English ended up adding some flavor to the album, but was unnecessary for my listening experience. These are snappy little songs put together on an album that does not take itself seriously, but does manage to demonstrate some of the breadth and vigor that Mike Patton's voice possesses. There may even be a song or two here that would work perfectly on a Valentine's Day mix tape/CD/playlist. As for Mike Patton's future as an Italian balladier? Maybe so, but probably not. 

Orchestral Italian cover band? Been there, done that...on to the next project.