Radio Rant: Ke$ha – Your Love Is My Drug

Posted on July 6, 2010 by bgibs122

Alright, so as you might have noticed, I don’t always talk about the most popular stuff around here. Whoops. So I figured it’d be fun if once a week I wrote about a song happens to be big on Pop FM, and call it “Radio Rants”. Because hey, I own a blog and why the hell not?

Ok, this week’s Radio Rant is a reflection and declaration of love from one of modern pop’s most innocent voices.

Yep. She was raised in Nashville.

Or...not.

After two slutty, inebriated rounds of trashy pop, Kesha tries her hand at a cute love song. But, to stay in character, she spends the whole song talking about love like…well, it’s all there in the title.

So let’s take a look at her, shall we? After opening with a synth line that might have more notes in it than “Tik Tok” and “Blah Blah Blah” did combined, Sha jumps right into taking a metaphor way too literally with “Maybe I need some rehab/Or maybe just needs some sleep/I got a sick obsession/I’m seeing it in my dreams”. Alright, I gotta get a couple basic principles about the song out here and now. Yes, every line is a very close derivative of the title. Yes, the rhymes are almost completely predictable. No, Kesha still hasn’t ditched that valley girl schtick with her voice. Which means yes, she’s still not-quite-rapping and sing-talking with Auto-Tune cranked up to 11.

Then we come to the chorus, the only part of the song that had any attention brought to it. Kind of. The chorus is usually the part of a song that gets people fired up, but this one is more “eh” than anything. We get a few too-enthusiastic bleats of “YOUR LOVE, YOUR LOVE, YOUR LOVE IS MY DRUG” over music that somehow sounds too busy and too empty. And then stops. It’s easy to see the attempt at a big, happy, singalong moment, but it just doesn’t take. Instead it sounds too forced and too loud and more fun to scream at people than sing.

Kesha plays the “sweet sounding bridge” card to a t in “Your Love Is My Drug”, and there’s a minor “holy shit” moment  where she actually sings a little for us. And even though it’s still as processed as a Big Mac, it’s a welcome change. Then she goes right back to being Kesha with more almost rapping, this time with little “huhs” that sound like a sound effect from the kid from Legend of Zelda. Cue another round of chorus, some awkward end of song banter, and the phrase “I like your beard”, which plays to Kesha’s secondary appeal of “One or two ‘What the fuck?’ lines per song”.

But it’s still actually kind of hard to hate on “Your Love Is My Drug”. It’d be a hell of a stretch to call it a good song, but then no part of it is volatile enough to call it a bad song. And even then, it comes across as being a cute try at a cute summer pop song (please note, a try); the sort of try that reminds me of a little kid trying to cook or fix something. Eh, what else is on?

I might break my own rule early and do another Radio Rant this week, just to show that I’m not a total FM cynic. Cheers!

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Album Review: Angels and Airwaves – Love

Posted on June 23, 2010 by bgibs122

“There’s something to be said for trying hard, you know? I mean, I know he tries too hard, but why is that such a bad thing?” Such a quote is from the John Green novel Paper Towns, and “he” refers to an on-the-fringe band kid in high school who tries to fit in with the popular kids, but it never takes.

Without too much of a stretch, it’s easy to see how this relates to Angels and Airwaves, especially frontman Tom Delonge. In fact, it could be argued that AvA’s career thus far has been nothing but trying too hard. This works for worse and for better; sure, grilling the band for Tom’s comments before “We Don’t Need to Whisper” was released is easy, but it was hard not to be excited by “The Adventure”. And hey, the rest of AvA’s 2006 debut wasn’t that bad either; it was “I-Empire” with Tom’s famous arm waving during the video for “Everything’s Magic” that swung back on the bad side of “trying too hard”. “Love” is the group’s third outing, and this time it’s being given away for absolutely free at modlife.com.

I can freely say that this is Angels and Airwaves’ best album. Of course, that isn’t saying a whole lot, but still, “Love” is the epitome of what listeners have and will come to expect from AvA. There’s a lot to like on this record. Firstly, the mix and production are top notch; spacey bleeps, delayed guitars, and crisp drum and cymbal crashes come through perfectly clear without sounding too plastic or overproduced. The band’s also firing on all cylinders instrumentally, too. Drummer Atom Willard brings energy to almost every track, adding a sense of urgency to the band’s default mid-tempo march. Guitarists David Kennedy and Tom Delonge echo and ring in all the right places and even churn out some great riffs here and there, like the “kick the door open” bombast on “The Flight of Apollo” or the furious riff on “Young London” (I’ll look the other way on similarities this shares with a much older blink riff). Matt Wachter keeps things grounded with steady basslines that play off of Willard’s drums for a great groove. One last “Hey, neat” addition to Angels’ arsenal is some programmed keyboard work, which fills in some of the intro/outros with a standout in “Clever Love”. A final positive note here is the increased energy put into “Love”. On earlier releases, AvA got called out on being too mid-tempo, but they seem to be actively working to correct themselves on that. Overall, the band seems to have finally found a true sense of who they are and who they’ll be.

Which isn’t without its flaws, which are the exact same things that have been issues since “We Don’t Have to Whisper”. Anytime Delonge hits anything resembling his upper-register, he becomes that nasally, pinched guy from blink all over again. Other trademark Angels and Airwaves flaws include the tastes-like-diabetes and heart on the sleeve lyrics that just can’t go away; this time around they include gems such as “We all are love/And love is hard/It breaks my heart” on “Letters to God pt. II”, and the too-enthusiastic “Let’s start a riot!” on “Young London”. For that matter, song titles occasionally fall into “Oh come on, seriously?” bad with offenders such as “Et Ducit Mundum Per Luce” or “The Moon-Atomic (…Fragments and Fictions)”. Intros and outros also take too long and do too little (“Shove” and the aforementioned “The Moon-Atomic” are main offenders), and there’s nothing as good as “It Hurts” to save the album from a trying back half.

At the end of the day, the Angels and Airwaves album sounds like an Angels and Airwaves album. Delonge and crew got so close to a career high four star album, but the pitfalls here just won’t let it happen. Three and a half stars, but promising.

tl;dr: I like it, I’m just not ready to love it yet.

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Album Review: Lady Gaga – The Fame Monster

Posted on June 21, 2010 by bgibs122

It’s been over a year since the Reign of Gaga really started, and I still don’t know how I feel about her. She’s a pop star with honest-to-God musical talent, but insists on “Let’s have some fun/This beat is sick/I wanna take a ride/On your disco stick”. I will say that a year ago she was a lot easier to hate, though. Remember “The Fame”? That album had about three great tracks buried with ten so-so to misfires. Even with Poker Face showing up everywhere in the spring of ’09, we could still write Gaga off as a one-hit wonder capitalizing on that hit. Lovegame didn’t do much in the way of changing that. But dammit, then came Paparazzi, and she started getting genuinely weird. But the pop snobs and music misanthropes (such as myself) could still say that she simply played the pop star game well and would be gone soon. Hopefully.

Then “The Fame Monster” happened, and we couldn’t even hope to call her a one-hit wonder again.

“The Fame Monster” is an 8 song EP released late last year, and it solidifies Gaga as a pop staple instead of a mere novelty act. Nothing on “The Fame” sounds quite as huge as the synth onslaught of “Bad Romance”, which never loses any steam or urgency during its five minute run. Sure, it still follows Gaga’s patented “intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-breakdown-bridge-chorus” formula to the t, but it she brings her A-Game. The music is dense, the beat is massive, and Gaga sounds more sure of herself than she ever has before.

On other highlight, “Dance in the Dark”, Lady Gaga improves on her lyrics. “Baby loves to dance in the dark/Because when he’s looking she falls apart” is the main chorus line, and elsewhere the song mentions those who paid the price for being young and famous (foreshadowing?). Musically, “Dance in the Dark” is a total pop romp with extra flourishes to help it stand above other cuts (“So Happy I Could Die”, for example). Then there’s “Speechless”, a song that’s as Queen as you can get without the band being there. And it’s good. If anyone needs proof that Gaga can stand on her own without preprogrammed beats or RedOne’s production savvy, here’s four and a half minutes of it.

A few other quick play-by-play highlights/notes. Every song here has a hook (save Speechless, which is really more classic rock than pop), and most of these hooks are pretty memorable in some way or another. In fact, it could be argued that “Monster”‘s odd hook “He ate my heart” is the redeeming quality in an otherwise middling song. Another plus is that I could easily imagine hearing all of these songs on the radio, although that was probably the intention. And even though the average song length is over four minutes, Gaga doesn’t run out of momentum until the very end with the frankly annoying “Teeth”.

All that said, “The Fame Monster” still isn’t without its ugly parts. The spoken word intros on “Monster”, “Dance in the Dark”, and “Teeth” are all wince-worthy, while that of “Alejandro” jives with the song’s Latin flare. But then “Alejandro” has problems of its own; namely being uncomfortably close to Ace of Base’s “Don’t Turn Around” and relying too much on a barely interesting chorus. “Telephone”, while energetic and begging for club/radio play, is the most predictable number here, and only saved by Beyonce’s frenzied delivery. “So Happy I Could Die” is a fine song on its own, but suffers by being pinned between “Telephone” and “Teeth”, as well as lacking any defining qualities other than Gaga talking about diddling herself. “Teeth”, the worst song here, wouldn’t have been out of place on “The Fame” since it comes across as Gaga parading as Christina Aguilera and failing (which from what I hear is a role reversal of Christina’s new one, “Bionic”) with “shock” sex lyrics.

In the end though, “The Fame Monster” points to good more than bad. At her best, Gaga shows why she deserves most of the hype and continues to be one of the more promising figures in modern pop. At the worst, you can still see she’s trying to work out the kinks in what does and doesn’t work. With little news on a second full length album, “The Fame Monster” exists as Gaga’s artistic proving ground.

tl;dr: Fame is a dish best served monstrous. Four stars.

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Album Review: The Dead Weather – Sea of Cowards

Posted on May 14, 2010 by bgibs122

Welcome to album two  band three for Jack White’s black-garbed The Dead Weather. “Sea of Cowards” comes less than a year after the band’s first effort, “Horehound”; meaning that expecting “Sea of Cowards” to be “Horehound: The B-sides” might not be that rare. But this is not at all the case. “Sea of Cowards” stands perfectly fine on its own as a snarling, uncompromising eleven-pack of howl-in-your-face tunes.

It’s not tough to imagine “Sea of Cowards” as being the result of a jam session. In fact, listening to the record in one sitting feels like the band’s in the room performing, glowering all their un-merry time. “Sea of Cowards” is a fighter through and through, and she’s a strong one at that. Perhaps the strongest element here that was missing on “Horehound” is how solid Jack and Jack (or White and Lawrence) work as a rhythm section. The two of them work together to keep the track firmly planted on the ground with White’s thundering drums and Lawrence’s distorted, punching basslines. Meanwhile, Dean Ferita jumps between eerie guitars and banshee wail synths to fill in the void and play alongside frontwoman Alison Mosshart. Who, by the way, is at the top of her game here with a tight grip on her alternating loud and soft vocals, using both in the right places. As a whole, the band sounds incredibly tight, deftly turning in stellar performances on freakouts like Die By The Drop while keeping things together on slow burners like Gasoline and I Can’t Hear You.

If I had one complaint with “Sea of Cowards”, though, it would be the lack of anything like “Horehound” opener 60 Feet Tall, or closer Will There Be Enough Water where the band focuses more on atmosphere instead of making a ruckus. But the tradeoff is that “Horehound” seemed to middle a lot more than “Sea of Cowards”, which keeps the energy and the volume up more often and is more engaging as a whole. An overall improvement. Four stars.

tl;dr: The Dead Weather avoid an easy to do more-of-the-same on album two by outdoing themselves in almost every way.

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