Posts Tagged ‘music review’
Ten Foot Pole – Subliminal Messages 68/100
This marks my 30th review on jeffchin.com! As Dave is posting more and more interesting stuff everyday, my posting has become more and more sparse. This is partly due to the increasing amount of non-website worthy work that I’ve been getting done on my new house. Painting, cleaning, obsessing over where the furniture is going to go, etc. Fun to talk about in person, but bland on the internet. Not sure how impersonal this site has gotten…and trying to counteract that by posting these short views into my life before my music reviews that I write for DOA.
This weekend, I’m headed to OC with nick, amy and amanda. Hope it’s good weather, should have some pix up from this weekend early next week. Until this, enjoy these pictures, I found this first one in a 7-Eleven in Alexandria, and this second one as the default picture in a picture frame at a Bed Bath and Beyond. Anyways, onto the review…
Halfway through the album, I flipped the CD jewel case over to check the release date.
“Copyright 2004.”
Whoa, wait a second: 2004? Sounds like 1996 to me. With former fun-loving punk posterboys Blink 182 evolving from the playful Dude Ranch to the lewd Take Off Your Pants and Jacket and finally the grown-up self-titled release, you’d think that the band hase at least slightly changed the game for all aspiring punk bands on the rise. But there is always room for punk bands that are just out playing music strictly for fun. Ten Foot Pole is one of them. It shows in their energetic songs, often juvenile lyrics, and simple arrangements. But, then again, music is still allowed to be fun – this is punk rock isn’t it?
The first band that popped into my head was Nerf Herder. Ten Foot Pole is similar to that band in many ways, most noticeably the lead singer’s gritty, raw, and inevitably punk vocal tone. Many of the songs tackle serious subjects such as physical abuse and Rachel Corrie (a volunteer who was killed by an Israeli with a bulldozer after trying to prevent a Palestinian home from being destroyed). Subliminal Messages has its fair share of typical punk songs about being kicked out of kindergarten and relationships with girls. “Wake Up (And Smell the Fascism)” loses its seriousness when the song ends with lyrics like, “Happy cheese comes from happy cows / They’re so udderly happy, just fuckin’ ask them.”
As I mentioned before, the music is simple but has plenty of hooks, breakdowns, and palm muting to fill the 32-minute, 12-song disc. Don’t expect lots of crazy guitar solos or innovation within punk music here. Ten Foot Pole’s Subliminal Messages is an all-too-familiar album that is at least entertaining at face value.
Haymarket Riot – Mog 77/100
4th of July weekend coming up, and still no plans. Have a few things that have potential but will probably stay in town. I just got my condo yesterday, complete with parking stickers, pool passes, etc…so I look forward to being poor. but at least I have a pool! In the next few weeks, it’s going to be a whirlwind of house projects like painting and stuff. If any of you suckers out there want to help me move in this saturday, let me know!
As for the review this week, Haymarket Riot was a decent band, but their sound was a little recycled as you’ll learn in the review…As with all my DOA reviews now, you can request to borrow the CD from me after I review them. I have so many CD’s now, it’s a little selfish to hoard them all for myself. Read on!
I know what you’re thinking as you glance over at the RIYL section of this review. “Oh no…not another Fugazi…” Many reviews of this and previous albums by Haymarket Riot almost always mention that similarity, but I have to admit, it’s undoubtedly there. The big drums, the crunchy guitars, the quirky guitar melodies, the loosely executed guitar fillers, and vocals that range from talking to barking, aren’t a “deal breaker,” but they are just there and somehow play a large part of how this genre of music is identified.
The abrasive tones of the guitars work well together. While one is noodling away at the main riff of the song, the other will be either palm muting away at the main chords or adding harmonics. The energy on Mog is inescapable because it isn’t an over-polished album and each track has a raw live feel.
One of my favorite tracks is “Uneasy Consequence.” The guitar riff is simple yet intriguing. Vocals take a backseat on this track and often meld in with the melodies and rhythm section. “Plastic Bottle Kid” uses a derivative of the main riff from “Uneasy Consequence.” Although the music is memorable, the lyrics are not.
After a few times through the album, the only lyrics that stuck in my head were from “Pushing Air”: “All the Same, all the same. Megabyte, gigawatts – all the same.” No not because they’re well-written lyrics, but because they’re off the wall and odd. Without the lyrics in front of me, I would’ve never figured out what they’re singing about. Maybe it’s better that way.
Haymarket Riot puts forth a strong effort but only falls short because of the use of a sound that feels a bit tired and recycled. So while many songs off of Mog are good for a mix CD every once in a while, an entire CD wasn’t the thing for me.
Peter Searcy – Couch Songs 77/100
Another week, another review. This CD was pretty good, dave you might enjoy this CD, it’s a little on the softer side, but had good melodies and the sound quality (even though it was recorded in his basement) is professionial. This Saturday, I’m headed to NYC for the day and night. Maybe headed to good ol’ Reading, PA for 4th of July to hang out w/ the groomsmen and soon to be married Ben Dowd, who is back from San Diego with his fiance…So, definitely more pics to be up soon. Enjoy the review…Dave, or anyone else for that matter, if you read one of my DOA reviews, and think you might want to check it out, let me know, and I’ll let you borrow it…Onto the review!
From the second I received the album, I had a pretty good idea of what kind of music I was about to hear. There couldn’t be a more descriptive title for the album than Couch Songs. Aside from the occasional brush drums, subtle strings, or piano arrangements and doubling vocals, the whole album is predominantly Peter Searcy (singer of Squirrel Bait, Big Wheel, and Starbilly) and his acoustic guitar. The album was actually recorded in his basement nicknamed “The Litter Box” compliments of his cat.
(Adopting an announcer’s voice) “This episode of the O.C. features music from…Peter Searcy,” as the the album art flashes across the TV for millions of teenagers and 20-somethings across the nation to see. Laugh now, but when you hear this melodic, simple and very clean sounding album, you will understand why the first thing I thought of when I heard the first few songs, was how each song could fit seamlessly into an episode of Dawson’s Creek and/or The O.C. Cue up “Rewind” during a scene in which the two main characters realize that they’re soulmates and get back together after a recent breakup. Play “Loneliest Girl” during that dialogue-less montage for the outcast character searching for a place in her new town. Anyways, you get the idea.
This is sentimental stuff, mostly about girls and relationships, but it’s done with a simplicity that isn’t around much in mainstream music these days. The problem with this album is that it’s the same thing the whole way through. The tempo rarely changes, and you could probably set a metronome to it. So if you’re up for an album of medium paced, acoustic songs powered by Peter Searcy’s acoustic guitar and gentle voice, this might be the album for you.
Brazil – A Hostage and the Meaning of Life 79/100
What a busy weekend. Friday morning, left for Boston for the weekend. It was really cool, I’ll have pics from that later this week…I was checking my nerdy website statistics to see what pages are linking to me, and noticed that former Weezer bassist Matt Sharp‘s site had linked to mine. I wrote a post a few weeks back about how he’s releasing a new solo album, so I guess that they noticed it, or saw it in their own website stats, all in all, pretty cool. As I mentioned before DOA has gone daily, so my review didn’t go up until Friday…didn’t get a review in for this week, but I’m working on pumpin’ out two before the end of the week to make up for it. Anyways, the CD I reviewed this week was Brazil. I saw them at the 9:30 club with Andrew a few months back, and really dug them. I thought their CD was pretty good, and gave it a favorable review, so again, if anyone wants to hear the CD, let me know and I’ll see if I can let you borrow it. Now onto the review…
My first encounter with Brazil was at the 9:30 Club. This was the first of four bands out of Rainer Maria, Funeral For a Friend, and headliners Coheed and Cambria.
“Brazil.” I thought, “That’s kind of a boring name for a band…these guys probably suck.”
Thankfully, I was wrong in the latter part of the previous statement. Brazil did not suck – far from it. But, with a band name the same as a country – it was sure hard to look the band up on the Internet after the show! Live, the sound was big, complex, and heavy. And fortunately the sound on disc carries much of these live element.
If you could characterize the band’s sound with two distinct elements, it would be the lead vocals and the piercing piano accents. The lead singer’s vocals are higher pitched than what you’d expect to hear from a hardcore band. It did not take long to become accustomed to his singing style because each song is sung on key and with proficiency. The hardcore ingredient is not delivered through his voice but through the grinding guitars and pounding drums. The piano on the other hand, counteracts the darkness of the other instruments and often doubles either the vocals or lead guitar. Sometimes the piano sticks out like a sore thumb because it does not have any distortion or effects processing.
From the commanding piano lick throughout “Io,” the Rush-like intro on “Metropol,” to the call-and-response breakdown between the two guitarists on “Escape,” I only have one complaint worth mentioning. I found the songs very busy and rarely heard a rest in any of the songs. With six band members, it might be hard to compose silence into a song, but there were times when a short silence would be more powerful than all instruments playing at once.
Nevertheless, I thought that A Hostage and the Meaning of Life was a very complete album with much to offer. Now if these guys would only do something about that band name…
