Hating Nickelback, Is It Too Inexplicable?

In the first nine years of the 21st century, we as humans have been surrounded by many things and mostly responded to what our fellow man has made popular. In around 2001, as America more or less became a nation that needed the solace of someone else, there was one band that so daftly answered all the fears Americans needed to quell. Almost ironically, that band was from Canada. Their lead singer kind of looked like the typical portrait of Jesus Christ, which makes even little sense seeing that this man seemed to have a more schizophrenic songwriting style of writing about sex and then writing about caring. And unless we're going by the Last Temptation of Christ depiction of Jesus, this is nowhere near the beliefs of a savior.

Yet in the sales sense, Nickelback kind of did become a savior to rock radio and its incessant need to play one "hit song" an hour. Since Coldplay wasn't there to annoy the nation quite yet (Parachutes was a minor success, their annoyance didn't crank in until A Rush of Blood to the Head and its double shot of annoyance in "Clocks" and "The Scientist".), it had to be this mediocre post-grunge band from the Great White North instead. It also saved Roadrunner Records, which had roughly one band with any sales before 2000 in some nine-piece group with masks called Slipknot.

Then of course, the backlash came. And there was an understandable reason for this backlash. After all, "Someday" sounds exactly like "How You Remind Me" and "Photograph" is a half written song about memories on an album where the lead singer often raves about silly sex. The band was so intent on sounding macho for the men with songs about mad sex that means nothing and has no consequences other than fun and then doing tender ballads that are to show your average middle aged housewife that these men aren't as perverted as they seem. They were the perfect music mogul's band. And they appealed to people that secretly hate music that speaks to roughly one person.

In seven years, Nickelback has become the one band on earth that being a fan or a hater of was almost a show of what you wanted to represent as a person. If you enjoyed the band, you clearly represented the class of the "unintelligible" people, which apparently represents around however many people bought 16 million albums, piracy not withstanding. And if you hated this band, you represented the cultured people that find enjoyment in things, mostly talking about how much they hate Nickelback.

I'll get this out of the way, I hate Nickelback. I don't find any pleasure in the music at all, though this is more out of personal dislike. Before, I thought it was related to their music sounding the same, until I realized that many amazing rock acts are guilty of sounding the same. Famously in the mid 1980s, John Fogerty of the classic band Creedence Clearwater Revival was sued because his own "The Old Man Down The Road" sounded a lot like "Run Through The Jungle". And you know what? Both songs are still amazingly awesome in their own right. Did Fogerty get criticism for basically doing what he does best? No. Mind you, I'm hardly comparing the talents of Nickelback to CCR or Fogerty because Fogerty was truly biting about his generation, about warfare, and about just writing great American stories through song. Nickelback wrote a number that asked "Why doesn't everyone in the world make peace?" after just saying that they'd punch out any guy who thought their girlfriend was sexy and that they wanted to put a bullet into the guy who killed Dimebag Darrell.

And yet, any tired criticisms have often to do with the fact that their songs sound the same, are about things like sex (which rock music has never ever talked about, not never), and that Chad Kroeger writes like he's working on 7th grade poetry. The third claim is sort of accurate, but the first two are constants in rock music anyway. And as much as fans of any sort hate to admit it, whenever a band sounds different, that's when the fans stray away quickly.

This is even a guilt association in indie music, as I remember Death Cab for Cutie fans hating that "I Will Possess Your Heart" lasted nine minutes, complete with a four and a half-minute bass solo presumably because vocalist Ben Gibbard's supposed to say something profound throughout all of their songs, despite the fact that the music behind Gibbard is oftentimes much better than anything he's actually saying. (Anybody that needs a good example for this should remember that it was The Postal Service's version of "Such Great Heights" that people find incredible, partly for the message but mostly for the fact that the musical accompaniment is awesome.)

But I digress, this is about the silliness of hating Nickelback in the trendy "I hate the mainstream" sense. I'm always curious why there's so much vitriol for this band from Canada. I've even been totally guilty of it a lot of the time, although, I never really figured out why I hated them so much other than maybe hearing my family play their music constantly. But there's no irony to hating Nickelback anymore. Maybe around 2002 after "How You Remind Me" became the most played song of ever, there was some bite to people being like "this music really sucks". But in 2008, when YouTube fans have posted tons of videos on their personal dislike for Nickelback and any person who digs into a little bit of any genre of music hates them, where is the irony in saying that you hate Nickelback? There's more fresh bite in people saying they hate Katy Perry for being a tease, and there's not nearly enough people giving that massive piece of insight to anyone. The point is that saying you hate Nickelback is about like saying you hate Pepsi or Dr. Pepper. It's a common causality of living in America at this point.

To throw in an indie example, if I said I hated the Arcade Fire for being too ridiculously showy in its performance style by throwing tons of instruments that probably show have no place in the songs, openly admitting making mistakes in instrumentation in the performance of their music, and growing in their attempts to "be deep" in terms of a lyrical message. Now I love the Arcade Fire, so this isn't me saying these things to get a "he's trying to be cool by hating everything else that's cool" reaction. This is a mere example that there would be a sense of the "divisive cool" that people think they get by admitting hating Nickelback and a dig on the fact that to be ironic, people will even hate the trendy bands of the indie scene. Case in point, the sudden dislike of Canadian supergroup The New Pornographers, specifically their 2007 album Challengers, and the inexplicable liking of electronic vomit like Flying Lotus. (I'm only using Pitchfork Media-based examples here.)

Two things rule us these days, and that is inexplicable love (like a lot of people tend to get any time Lil' Wayne craps out a mix tape some Sunday afternoon in June) and inexplicable hate (like the fact that people will outright hate The Hills, hate MTV, hate Nickelback, and hate mainstream media, despite how much of it they still consume). I kind of rest on some sort of chain of apathy, honestly, even though I border the line of inexplicable hate. I dislike a lot of things, but unless they're horrible actions that attempt to destroy humanity (i.e. not anything entertainment-related), I don't wish them dead. I don't really have an interest in The Hills or Heidi Montag's singing career or Kristen Cavalleri's attempts to act. But at the same time, the show doesn't affect me for the worse. I wouldn't be affected if the cast suddenly died, but I wouldn't dance on their graves while singing "Glory Glory Hallelujah" either.

Of course, I'm not going to act like I'm not repulsed by the Jonas Brothers, in which that's a perfect example of inexplicable hate. I hate these three brothers because they make music I don't like and in turn are everywhere on my television, despite the fact that I have ownership of a remote control and can tune these three kids out of my life. So I'm not saying that inexplicable hate still won't happen. I'm just noticing it a bit too much. And everyone's guilty of that moment. I hate Brett Favre for the fact that he turned into a diva for the past few seasons. He's a great quarterback, but I don't ever think the Jets or the Raiders or whatever team gets him next season after he fakes another retirement will ever be a solid team solely because I don't like him. This is completely inexplicable, almost as inexplicable as hating Tom Cruise movies because he's kind of freaky, or Michael Jackson's music because...same reason, or Neil Patrick Harris' acting because he's gay. It's all inexplicable, and I think we should stop that sort of silly judgment, even though, we never really quite will because we're moralistic.

To drag this back to Nickelback, we as the "cultured people" hate them because of what they represent. And ostensibly, it's that a severe lack of human accomplishment has bred success. This is why "cultured people", especially people who idealize themselves as music enthusiasts, can't stand Nickelback. They don't accomplish the musical feats of The Arcade Fire or the experimentalism of Radiohead or even the slight bit of irony of Sufjan Stevens. With a straight face, Nickelback plays music they essentially already made, write songs about things they already love, and never talk about anything different unless a famous rock guitarist gets shot during a performance. They are the exact depiction of the conventional rock band. They're always consistent in the fact that they sound the same. And guess what? Their last album sold seven million copies in the United States, even when all three of those groups combined can't do half of those numbers, And that's including Radiohead's whole pay-if-you-want model for In Rainbows, which kind of proves the point that they couldn't sell seven million copies without charging nothing for it.

And yet Nickelback has not only found success, but they're one of the only major musical groups whose sales have actually grown during the file-sharing era. While people would big up groups like The Shins as for groups that have grown in sales during the file-sharing era, The Shins basically only got this success from Natalie Portman claiming their music would change everyone's life. Nickelback got it from doing the same general thing for seven years, and people somehow keep enjoying it.

So ultimately, I still don't like Nickelback. However, like all inexplicable hate (like people hating people who like Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Wild Hogs and Norbit) I'll try to keep that more closed in next time because this ultimately affects nothing in my life. When someone likes Jeff Dunham or North Face jackets or Ace of Base, my real reaction should be "That's cool, want some soda?" or something like that. Taste is supposed to affect the populace's view of themselves, but really, it's a distance creating device. One that I won't stop with, of course, but one that maybe a tad bit more tolerance is something I should operate with next time.

That is, unless you just like crap inexplicably.

(Writer's Note: I'll be back on Tuesday, but I'm probably not doing the Overrated, Correctly Rated thing after all because...come on, it's Dead Week. I gotta study sometime or another.)

Ch-Ch-Changes.

There is a bit of a format shift that's going to happen with this fine blog space. While music is still playing a big part to this fine blog, I feel like there are some topics that I want to explore that are kind of hard to under the umbrella of a music blog. This will not suddenly become the Trey's Life And Uhh...Oh Yeah, Other Stuff Blog, but it will be more like my diversion not too long ago about True Life where I talk about TV and things of that sort. I'm also a heavy film geek, so that will play a lot into it. Expect a slight name change as well to accompany the "not music" subjects, and more wordiness because it's not like I have enough wordiness already.

So yeah, if you're one of the devout readers (and who isn't, obviously), don't be jarred by a name change and etc. Have a good Thanksgiving, find some good deals on some CDs and movies on Black Friday. Peace.

Kanye West does an album where he doesn't rap?

If you haven't lived under a rock, or had the power to your computer cut off in the last couple of months, you should already know about Kanye West's latest incredibly awesome single "Love Lockdown" which is leading to a new album called 808's and Heartbreak. You likely appreciated "Love Lockdown" as both a dance song and a song about men hating women that are too clingy or that they just don't love as much for whatever reason. Maybe you enjoyed "Heartless" for its use of the phrase "How could you be so Dr. Evil?" Or maybe you quickly casted it off for those exact reasons. Clearly he's just making a minimalist dance record about his lost love, right? And clearly this auto-tune thing is the most godawful annoying thing to happen to hip-hop since people sued for sampling, correct?

Technically, both of the answers to that are yes. 808s and Heartbreak is easily described by its title, and all of it is based around the problems that ruin relationships. Which immediately makes it a tad bit more thematic than say T.I.'s new album Paper Trail being based around the rapper actually *gasp* writing his songs. What a new concept to hip-hop. And fans of Kanye's production don't really get much to chew on, as Kanye strips down songs to a tribal beat and a few occasional beeps and whistles, only busting out an orchestra for a song like "Robocop" that desperately needs musical direction.

Video for "Love Lockdown".

And one thing is amazingly clear on 808s and Heartbreak as well: Kanye is as flawed of a person as the unnamed female (probably an ex-fiancee, but probably better off as unnamed) he loves, misses, derides for her craziness, and eventually leaves. This is probably the most vulnerable a rapper has exposed himself to be and as experimental as a rapper has been since Common's Electric Circus. But whereas Common incorporates love and romance between adults in his music nearly all the time, Kanye never has been forthcoming on his romantic peril in any of his music before this, excluding maybe "Flashing Lights" from last year's Graduation. And even then, he hasn't revealed to this degree that maybe he doesn't love his dream girl quite the way that he had wanted to. That even with everything that he has and a woman that he adores, he isn't really happy.

The entire album sort of speaks in a timeline. You could get that "Say You Will" is about a breakup, leading to "Welcome to Heartbreak" in which West overthinks about the idealized romance of his friends and their inherent happiness over having children and living "the dream". Which makes total sense, since West is 31. In theory, his biological clock is ticking down and he's left with a brief amount of time to find that romance he wants. He's not saying anything particularly new persay, but for a rap artist to admit that his life basically sucks and he needs a woman probably more badly than they need him is a stunning sentiment.

Video for "Heartless".

Songs like "Heartless" and "Love Lockdown" are less dreary, and they fit the pacing of the album because of it. There's a sense of anger on these tracks, but it's anger under the context of romance, and so the chords are a little happier and Kanye has a little bit of his traditional swagger. They also make the second act of a three part act. Act 1 is the loneliness of "Welcome to Heartbreak". Act 2 is the more divine "relationship" songs of "Heartless" to "Robocop". Act 3 meanwhile, fits the more crushing tragic aspect, from admitting that a traditional relationship with him is designed for failure on "Street Lights", to the breakup of "Bad News" and the even more soul-crushing "Coldest Winter" based around the passing of West's mom Donda.

And Kanye seems to feel like crap because he views all of his achievements under a mere word: amazing. That's it. There's seemingly no more pleasure he gets out of his lifestyle, one that's tearing the relationship apart but one he has to do because he grasps for the scope of achievement. He wants to be seen as even more than what he is, and yet on "Amazing", it's drearier than that. As much as he enjoys success, he feels numb. He's already sold millions of albums and said things that are ridiculous and gotten tons of awards for his work. And yet he's not happy. And even with some perceived love, he isn't happy. This isn't a ballad about all of the riches in world not being enough compared to love. It's about the riches being there, and the perceived love being there, and yet there's no pure happiness about it.

West even admits that this is his fault in a way on "Robocop". He admits that he's into "crazy" women. He admits that his life is this way because of his own decisions and thus, even in the context of a song where he's coyly laughing about his girl's precedence to spy into his life, he sees this as all his own fault.

All of this sounds like it is scarily hard to listen to and it arguably is at times, but there's something much more intriguing about West's psychological treatment via music. The auto-tune technique isn't really distracting in any way, and it fits the broken nature of 808s and Heartbreak. The production tends to get more intriguing as the album goes on, so anyone scared off by "Love Lockdown" might find songs like "Paranoid" as up their alley.

If a hip-hop record can get an award for "going out on a limb and doing something no one expects", 808s and Heartbreak would take that award hands down. It is ambitious and mostly accomplished, which means that it's pretty intimate and scary all the same. Still, it's nice to see someone in hip-hop go out on that limb because...wow. There could be some interesting results.

In Defense Of...Beck - The Information

This isn't really going to be a defense column no more than a "why didn't anyone buy this record" column. Of course, I'm sure that a decent deal of the music I listen to goes through the same quandary of not many people buying the record, but Beck's 2006 album The Information seems like a weird surprise non-success in terms of its commercial aspirations. After earning the third-highest sales of his career with 2005's Guero, Beck was revitalized in the mainstream and also buoyed by the success of the anthemic "E-Pro" and the cute "Girl".

So for a new album, Beck did what he always does best: he made it his own way. After creating probably the most accessible album of his career (excluding Odelay), Beck decided to make an hour-long record that's mostly electronic-based. Using producer Nigel Godrich -- he of producing Radiohead's OK Computer fame -- Beck creates a sound that's completely different than his usual material, and yet is still unmistakably Beck.

And yet, there's a more nervously human side of the man on this record. In amidst songs about dancing alone and elevator music, there's a track called "Think I'm In Love," which is about when an awkward guy falls in love either for the first time or even for the millionth time. Who the person or thing he's in love with is not really the issue. The issue there's so much more meaning in Beck's nervousness. Not that Beck never shifts his personality to his human self, he talked about his summer girl (probably) Marissa Ribisi on Guero and pined away for lost love for the entirety of 2002's Sea Change. But whether it's a true example of the man or not, there's something that Beck never seems to show. Not him as a character or as a guy spouting off about "mouthwash jukebox gasoline." And it goes a long way to leave a lasting impression for this monster of a record.

Video for "Think I'm In Love".

The Information runs sixty-one minutes and twenty-nine seconds, and for the most part, is completely worth the length. The sixty-one minutes is a bit of a misnomer, as ten and a half are thrown onto the intriguing if not necessarily great or even really necessary outro "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton." Still, there's a spectacular amount of noise on this record. All of the tracks feel like they're spinning on from the rhythms of past Beck songs, but don't feel derivative. "Strange Apparition" kind of sounds like Odelay's "Jack-ss" and "Where's It At," but is good enough in its own right to be awesome. Plus, if there's any artist who's surely running out of material to not rip off, it's a man with twelve full-length albums. Beck can be cut a little slack.

The entire album is just so fluid. No song is particularly unlistenable (even the aforementioned outro), and that's quite an accomplishment for any record to achieve. Interesting diversions like "Dark Star" use its orchestral background to near-perfection, while "1000 bpm" plays with electronic conventions. "Nausea" is the perfectly suitable lead single while "Soldier Jane" is an ethereal experience. All of the songs on the album either have a purpose, or are so interesting to listen to that any sort of purpose doesn't matter.

So in short, Beck's The Information isn't really a record that is being defended because it was considered mediocre, when it should be considered great. No, The Information just deserves to be heard. Period.

Diversion: Yes, I'm blogging about True Life.

There are a lot of things in this world that shape it. All kinds of music, film, and even television. And what's the most decrepit influence on our society right now? Clearly MTV, right? Actually, not so much. I can't lie, I don't mind being an apologist for MTV's campy programming, because it's all terrible in the cognitive sense. They focus on the vapid. Place people on high pedestals that hardly deserve it. But wait, isn't that life's general path anyway? Look around you at the popular kids, the sorority queens, and the frat guys. What have they all achieved? The success of being attractive to a general audience of people with mostly no other redeeming qualities otherwise. That's exactly MTV for you, and yes, this immediately makes it a repellent. And yes, it's the perfect ideology of why people hate MTV. They hate it because it represents the people they equally can't stand and yet are forced to see on a daily basis. They maybe are even friends with "those people" despite their actual apprehension against them.

Of course, this leads to True Life, which weirdly is not entirely vapid in some instances. The stories tend to be engrossing because there's usually an example of relatibility in at least one of the stories involved. The episode I saw had to do with embarrassing parents with the point being to over-exaggerate the parents, the embarrassment they cause their kids, and the rift between kid and parent that ultimately humanizes the parents at the end.

We are shown a portrait of two girls, one a reserved teen girl who's more or less trying to find normalcy in her life and another who's craving desperately for individualism and to kind of sort of get away from the shadow of her bimbo-esque mother.

The more reserved girl's parents are clowns who work at a circus and have a house with tons of memorabilia. They're also crazy and stunned whenever she decides to go out on a date with a kid nicknamed Squirrel (I kid you not). Of course, they also demand that this date be at the circus and that of course, they watch from a faraway glance. But this brings on a nice bit of idealism. We get the idea that the reserved girl is pretty average, in the good sort of way. She has the friend with the Jack Skellington jacket and the slightly gothy overtones, but they're all normal, and even by the episode's climax of the parents bringing their clown buddies over to "embarrass" the child, you find out that it's all in good fun and that embracing eccentricities over fighting them ultimately is more rewarding.

Yes, such a universal message of unity came from a frickin' MTV show. I'm as amazed as you.

The other story is more vapid, but as similar to a point. It's more of an examination that first digs into the idea of the "cool parent" and why kids are going to be embarrassed regardless by that type of parent, because that's of course the job of a teenager to rebel. But then it digs into something that is more involving and gripping, dealing with the issue of parents who never let their kids truly be themselves by influencing their decisions with an iron fist and taking away their individualism. This reaches its climax over the 14-year-old girl asking her mother for a lip ring. Her mother vehemently rejects the idea at first, but after a series of events including a party in which the mother turns into your typical Los Angeles bimbo in the process of a night, the idea is questioned.

The reason this is gripping to the viewer is not the lip ring at all. For all we know, the war could be over anything such as trying out for the volleyball team or the school production of Hansel and Gretel or whatever. The fact that it's about a lip ring is completely useless to the point. The war itself is just about some sense of individualism. If the mother is allowed to "be herself" by dressing in Pamela Anderson-esque clothes, then why doesn't the kid try to show what she feels she needs to be herself? And yet, she's still a kid who's going to playfully mock her mother after the mother agrees with this decision, because that's normal. That's teenage rebellion.

True Life is not always nearly as engrossing, but there's a lot of intriguing morals to get out of any episode. And for any show on MTV of all things to emphasize the themes of being yourself and having fun with the people you're around and the experiences you get to share, it's an accomplishment.

Not that the other shows on the channel aren't gripping in that "oh, this is ironically awesome" sort of way, of course.

(Writer's Note: I know this has nothing at all to do with music, despite the fact that it involves a show on a channel that has music in the name. I also know that I could make a tired joke about that channel no longer playing music, but that's far too painfully obvious, so I'm not. I also realize that this could read as "In Defense Of...MTV" but it's not really. I don't watch enough of it to defend it successfully, really.

The final edition of In Defense Of shall be up on the weekend. Thank you for reading.)

In Defense Of...Audioslave - Self-Titled

In the remnants of the much-beloved, if extremely angry, Rage Against The Machine came a lot of hype for three of the band members' new project called Audioslave. This was to be the perfect merger of the 1990s two core rock sounds: the angry sound of Rage Against The Machine's music and the...uhh...angry sound of Chris Cornell's Soundgarden. In 2002, when their self-titled album was released on the hype of an amazing rock song called "Cochise", everyone expected that Cornell's introspective vocals with the Rage sound would lead to such amazing rock. Instead, they got a record that brought a ton of introspective content and only has a slight semblance to Rage.

I'll readily admit first off that I'd rather listen to Cornell's solo material or the Soundgarden material over Audioslave, and the same goes for Rage in comparison to Audioslave as well. Still, I'd argue that the first Audioslave album contains a nice balance of the hard rock material mixed in with the type of songs that Cornell felt represented his songwriting style. "Cochise" opens up the album with the musical equivalent of a sonic boom in that it's blistering and exhilarating. "Show Me How to Live" is more controlled in its noise, but it exposes the positives of Cornell versus former Rage vocalist Zach de la Rocha in that a "chill out" song never has to be uninteresting. Cornell is a more pure talent than de la Rocha, and a song like "Show Me How to Live" proves it.

Video for "Show Me How to Live".

And as misguided as the Cornell/Morello/Commerford/Wilk pairing showed itself to be on the mostly disappointing Out of Exile and Revelations, on the first record, they seemed to click from the onset. The album's first four tracks were the perfect blend of hard rock and tender vocals. The boys seemed made to actually last longer than five years and three albums. And even more "soft" ballads like "I Am The Highway" and "Shadow on the Sun" had their place, and was a better example of where the group truly could have worked than say "Doesn't Remind Me" from Out of Exile, a track where Cornell boasts that he stares at a lot of things because he's not reminded of anything at all. In turn, we're supposed to feel he's happy about not being depressed by his surroundings, but really...you get the point long before the four minutes are up. Whereas, "I Am The Highway" is more motivating about its message of not being used and doesn't march to an obvious point seconds into the song.

Not all of this album is great, of course. No modern rock record should ever go past one hour in length, and Audioslave reaches 65 minutes. Not to mention that I can barely point out anything of worth on the second half of Audioslave. Still, I find that this record doesn't try to bend to either direction of the spectrum. Cornell doesn't act like he's de la Rocha nor does he get into silly didactic politics, and the Rage guys realize that they don't have to go all out for every song. The tricks of Tom Morello had their place, but with no de la Rocha or the aforementioned didactic political content, neither he nor the rest of the band needed to sound exactly like their previous work. (To ramble on Morello, that's one thing that I appreciate about his stuff. Rage doesn't really sound like Audioslave and certainly neither of them sound like The Nightwatchman. But that point on Morello can be saved for another time.)

While yes, Audioslave did hit a brick wall in terms of direction and commercial success, the band at least has the good charm of that first album, a first album that maybe just deserves that second look.

In Defense Of...Fall Out Boy - Infinity on High

Okay, let's get this out right off the bat. I can't stand Pete Wentz. Wentz is the embodiment of everything that's wrong with celebrity culture today. He's exploitative, overly demanding, and has almost megalomaniacal control over his band despite the fact that he's in the position that (theoretically) holds the least effect on their sound in that he's the band's bassist. Of course, he's also the band's key songwriter but this is besides the point. The point is that I really just don't like Mr. Wentz.

And yet I thoroughly enjoy his band, including the one that's earned them the most heat for its alleged "sellout" nature, 2007's Infinity on High. Infinity on High is essentially FOB's catchy melodies plastered onto a refined soulful sound with more emphasis on producer Babyface's sense of rhythm than the traditional pop-punk sound. But for pop-punk fans, that serves to be a problem. They don't want any remote change to their sound, thus why a band like Paramore, which arguably sounds like a coughed up copy of FOB (who in themselves were a coughed up version of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket-era blink-182 and Lifetime) replaced with an attractive redhead vocalist as opposed to a man with a funny hat, suddenly becomes huge with the same audiences that embraced 2005's From Under The Cork Tree.

Video for "The Take Over, The Break's Over".

Of course, it's not entirely the change in tone and altering of sound that fans hate, but it seems to harbor the most dislike for the record. And ultimately the record is a perfectly fine pop record that hits the right notes on all cylinders. Especially on singles like "The Take Over, The Break's Over" and "This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race", there is a nice containment of commentary on the modern music industry and Wentz *gasp* gets in a few clever well-written jabs.

Wentz gets the idea of the pop hook, something that nearly every song on Infinity on High has, and yet finds a way to change Fall Out Boy's trajectory. This isn't a sellout move, in all honesty. Well...technically, it is. But none of the tracks on Infinity are nearly as annoying as most of Cork Tree. And it's not like this band never had ridiculous pop tendencies to begin with. "Grand Theft Autumn" is amazingly poppy, almost moreso than any of their famous tracks like "Sugar, We're Going Down" or "Dance, Dance".

Video for "Grand Theft Autumn".


This isn't to say that Infinity on High is the best record ever, though. Just the best of Fall Out Boy's catalog so far. I still can't really like "Hum Hallelujah" as it's related to that coughing up part I brought up from later. (As in, it's reusing a line from "Hallelujah" due to Pete being inspired by Jeff Buckley who covered Leonard Cohen.) And that it seems kind of silly to write about how depressive and suicidal you are in the confines of a pleasant song, even if it's been brought up before as a cool ironic archetype from the 90s.

Still, I like FOB for their simplicity at the end of the day. People shouldn't apologize for making pop, and at the very least, Wentz and his group aren't full-on teases with zero sense for how to write like most pop artists of their time(that's meant in a musical sense, not in the "showing your privates" sense). They're not anything legendary, but neither is a group like the Foo Fighters, who do the same poppy hook formula and people like them all the same.

In Defense Of...John Mayer

If you've been remotely alive in the 21st century, you'll know that two modern crests of singer-songwriter pop are two artists simply known as Jack Johnson and John Mayer.

Jack Johnson seems like the type of guy who never had one bad day in his life. His dog, his wife, and his pet guinea pig could all die at the same time, but if there's a beach nearby, his sorrow would just wash away. And then he'd get high and write songs for a movie version of Curious George.

John Mayer seems like the guy that would be more vapid and uncaring about his work. In between making albums, (and clearly having a resemblance to this blog writer) he has had a relationship with pretty much every famous person you've ever wanted to...meet. Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Love-Hewitt, and etc. prove that the guy's basically proven that his music and personality is so charming that he's everything women love and that men frickin' despise. His songs get passed off as cornball -- which they are if we're referring to songs like the ridiculously idealistic "No Such Thing" -- but he gets shunned for having no musical depth or discernible talent, which isn't really true at all.

Mayer is a pop idealist. He has progressed to writing songs that know fullwell that they are intended for mainstream audiences, but never over-simplifies his lyrics and adds a nice pastiche of influences to his sound. This is probably most evident on his 2006 album Continuum, which actually has some nice strumming and a pretty good cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Bold as Love". And anybody that can do a Hendrix cover that doesn't disgrace Hendrix's music, they deserve to be honored.

I'm not going to act like Mayer's a great artist by any stretch of the imagination. He overemphasizes themes of love in his music, but he has a nice interest in the human condition. On another Continuum track, "Waiting on the World to Change", he dives into why people his age -- i.e. the 20somethings crowd -- are so apathetic about the shape of the world and that maybe a sense of optimism could help rile the people. It's an effortless pop song that is done with a ton of effort. Happy chords drown out any sense of negativity you could find, and while most cynics would hate it for Mayer's idealism, the song works as pop and as a well-written message song. Mayer doesn't beat the audience over the head, despite the simple message. He isn't commanding his audience to blame something on somebody else, but rather BE the change however you see it. It's a cheesy idea, but I'd rather have Mayer's simplicity than a band like Green Day droning on about how much they hate the President without even thinking about the changes they would do to make things better.

His style of playing has evolved. He's dug more into artists such as the legendary Curtis Mayfield to get a sort of old-school R&B sound to mix in with the acoustic nature of his works. He's had less of the cornball lyrics with each successive album that he has made, and even got into a fight with Columbia Records over the release of Continuum. He even made a stirring cover of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" that, as per usual, a lot of girls love and not many guys have even heard it.

So yeah, even if he's basically living a fantasy life, I like the guy. Plus, he's pretty funny from time to time actually. So that clearly has to mean the guy's not as grating as your average singer-songwriter. Right?

In Defense Of...90s Rock

Prior to the writing of this entry, I listened to a song released in 1998 from Shawn Mullins called "Lullaby." This is a song that no one remembers in the slightest unless you heard the chorus with its comfortable inflection of "rock-a-bye", despite the fact the song's called "Lullaby". "Lullaby" is a wretched horrible song, but it's great at the same time because I remember it from when I was a kid. The same would go for the Verve Pipe's "The Freshman" and New Radicals' "You Only Get What You Give".

Now when I define 90s rock, I don't really mean stuff like Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Rage Against The Machine, etc. that became beloved music that also was popular. No, I mean the era in the late 1990s where Bush's "Glycerine" and "Machinehead" ruled rock radio. And yet no one talks about how great of a band Bush is. Which...they're really not. But they made simply great songs, and "Glycerine" even stands the test of time as a simple, well-composed pop song that I'd gladly play in amongst (PRETENTIOUSNESS WARNING) my playlist of Sonic Youth, Caribou, St. Vincent, and The Shins.

In fairness, these songs are products of their time. There was a small time in the 1990s where pop music could contain depressing content as long as the song had a happy sound at the end of the day. After all one of my favorite songs from the era was Third Eye Blind's "Semi Charmed Life". And about 2% (at most) who listened to that song got that it was talking about continued drug use building up to an overdose. I'm guessing slightly more people figured out their later hit "Jumper" was about talking down a potential suicide case.

Now, I'll gladly reminisce a song like "Semi Charmed Life" but I mostly can't stand popular radio, and the reason is pretty obvious. These songs are comfortable because they were the music you heard as a kid. The great advantage to being a kid is that most kids would listen to anything they had put in front of them. I even *gasp* bought a Backstreet Boys cassette tape when I was around 10. Oh, the things I'll shamefully admit on the internet to an audience of 2.

So, did I like these crappy songs because they had a safe radio sound when I denounce music today for having that same sound? Yeah, pretty much. But there is a perfectly fine place for nostalgia. Just because you hate rock radio's mix of Hinder, Nickelback, and Three Days Grace doesn't mean you have to throw away that long lost Lemonheads record (though, the Lemonheads are legitimately solid all the same), and listen to it. Nostalgia has its place. After all, people still ironically love hair metal.

In Defense Of...Nas

Welcome to the first edition of In Defense Of, where I more or less get to say why an artist deserves more praise or more attention. (So basically, a formal version of everything else I do now.)

This edition begins with a rapper from New York most famous for his tales of street life who has evolved in the 21st century to become an elder statesman of sorts about hip-hop music in general.

Nasir Jones spent the early 1990s getting out of the troubles of street life to create one of the most universally beloved albums in rap history in 1995's Illmatic. Everyone from those who knew Nas's streets to craggy old white critics loved the true grit that Jones showed in his unflinching portrayal of the very street life he escaped. In fact, they loved it so much that every album since then has more or less been compared -- often unfairly -- to his masterwork. Even records as culturally important as 2006's Hip Hop is Dead or his most recent stand for the issue of racism on 2008's Untitled has gone under fire for Nas not being like Nas.

Ultimately, the argument seems moot. While Nas has his pulse on the streets of Queens, a man earning the money and living the lifestyle that Mr. Jones does can't simply go back again to the stories he made famous in 1995. Unlike many rappers who claim that they lived the harsh lifestyles of America's roughest streets, Jones has the pedigree to back it up. So to suddenly revisit a different time period would be not only pandering to the people who want to hear what their version of Nas is, but that it would be disingenuous considering what we all know about Nas right now.



This is why his "elder statesman" releases, specifically the aforementioned Hip Hop is Dead and Untitled, are evidence of why Nas is one of the best currently active rappers in the genre right now.

Both releases examine topics that Nas faintly covered on Illmatic, but never really gave much thought at the time in using such a massive platform to talk about these topics. Hip Hop is Dead is a lament about the ridiculous commercialization of the genre, to the point that groups like D4L, Dem Franchize Boyz, and Soulja Boy have had steady careers in the genre, while artists "with a legacy" like KRS-One have struggled to keep up in terms of sales.

Video for "Hip Hop is Dead."

Thus Nas, one of the few veterans of hip-hop suddenly not washed away by the genre's changing tide, feels fit to comment on what made the genre intriguing in the first place and in turn reviving the idea of "intelligent mainstream hip-hop." Keep in mind that less than a year after the album's release that Kanye West's Graduation had the biggest opening week sales of any hip-hop record in nearly five years, though, that later was toppled by Lil' Wayne's The Carter III a mere few months later. And of course, that same year also saw the ridiculous craze of "Crank Dat," so the genre has a ways to go but artists like El-P, Aesop Rock, Sage Francis, Saul Williams, and even the more mainstream Lupe Fiasco have breathed creativity into hip-hop in the 21st century.



Untitled, meanwhile, is an entirely different beast. To know the true essence of the album's message, you must remember the album's original title, which was to be called the N-word. Nas here digs into every element that divides ethnicities in general, from the mostly incorrect stereotypes that divide black people and white people to the fact that his race still holds up the N-word as significant (which it is) when he feels that positive reinforcement means that the word could just as much be like any other word in the English vernacular. But before the listener gets the idea that this is all about attacking racism and dissecting what one word has done to stereotype a race of people, Nas takes another left turn. He talks about the culture of equality for all races, the idea that America is potentially as savage as any other region in the world if the people don't discover a sense of unity, as shown in "America."

Video for "Hero," a single from Untitled.

With this in mind, Untitled is easily the strongest release Nas has made since Illmatic. That's always a bold statement to make, but there's a sense of importance that was made apparent through most of Hip Hop is Dead and nearly all of Untitled. Not to mention that Nas' Achilles heel of less than stellar musical backing is solved by taking in fine producers like Polow Da Don and stic.man and having them simply work their magic.

While there isn't a credible defense to all of his work, which is to say that Street's Disciple, God's Son, Stillmatic, and I Am... all have good tracks but aren't amazing records (and the less brought up about Nastradamus the better), this isn't an excuse to pass off Nasir Jones's hip-hop career. In as much as I love early 1990s hip-hop and Illmatic's amazing stories, there is a lot more to Nasir Jones than a good album of street slang. There is a fully realized dynamo that has delivered a solid body of work, even if the middle albums are the nadir that eventually has risen back up. Not to mention that Nas has even "beaten" his comtemporaries in quality tracks, because let's be honest. Nas's "Ether" is such a better song than Jay-Z's "Takeover."

And even as he grows older and wiser, I don't really think Nas will ever stop being as blunt as he's been since day one. After all, that's unlike the guy who wrote about his own New York state of mind to stop having his own opinion.

(Album art courtesy of Amazon.com and Def Jam Records.)

An Explanation.

So, over the next six weeks in a series that most likely will go on until the end of the year, I'll go over a few categories of popular artists that might be either crapped on (In Defense Of), overrated (which speaks for itself), or as good as most people would say they are (The Correctly Rated). Ultimately, you might throw in some discussion on why you enjoy these artists. Or maybe it's just a good excuse for you to send hate mail (trirby@bama.ua.edu).

Either way, on Monday the madness begins with the most defensive of the categories, a session of In Defense Of. Next week will cover artists and the week after will cover albums that might either be unheralded or vastly underrated. So otherwise, more fun for everyone.

Fabrizio Moretti's Little Joy

(Photo by Autumn de Wilde.)

Three days ago, a Little Joy came upon the world. (And the Little Joy puns begin with a knockout.) On November 4th, Fabrizio Moretti, who's most famous for beating the drums for The Strokes and for bagging Drew Barrymore, released a new debut eponymous album for his newest project Little Joy. The band itself started as a venture between Moretti, a vocalist/guitarist named Rodrigo Amarante, and a multi-instrumentalist named Binki Shapiro who all simply recorded demo tracks with each other for fun. However, the more they enjoyed this creation of music, the sooner they decided to work together for a full record and hired producer Noah Georgeson to get everything tight and right.

With the vibe of this record being that it's spontaneous and very short -- running only at 31 minutes in length -- it's hard not to make a comparison to Moretti's more known work with The Strokes and their debut record, Is This It. And even tracks such as "Keep Me in Mind" and "Don't Watch Me Dancing" are extremely reminiscent of songs from Is This It. But thankfully, Moretti and his bandmates all bring something to the table that sort of mixes the good qualities of The Strokes and Amarante's work in a Brazilian indie rock quarter known as Los Hermanos. Little Joy has the quick pacing of a Strokes record thrown together with a more laid back approach. You can't help but feel peaceful and feel that life is such a simpler place as Amarante croons that "There ain't no lover like the one I've got/Ain't no lover like the one I've got/She and I have a brand new start/I gotta give all my love" as on "Brand New Start."

Arguably, "Brand New Start" is as sappy as any pap you would hear on the radio, but it works under the context of the do-it-yourself aesthetic of the band. Amarante might not mean anything about what he says, but he's having an utter blast with the song and he's not being overproduced or prodded into what most listeners would consider as "fun music." And the slight reggae influence mixed in with the smallest hint of garage rock and idealized lyrics is the perfect autumn music.

It helps that Little Joy's music succeeds in never overstaying its welcome. It is amazingly brief at 31 minutes, and seeing that Moretti's The Strokes had their last record (2006's First Impressions of Earth) go on for far too long at 52 minutes, this is a welcome amount of time for an album. And ultimately, a welcome time for an album that's surprisingly and wonderfully the best thing a Strokes member has put out in about five years.

Now let's see if Moretti's other band ever gets back together long enough to top it.

Currently, Little Joy's debut is streamable on their MySpace.

Lazy Wednesday.

Eh, I don't feel like ranting and raving about who I hate or what I like or what color the sky is today. (By the way, the color is clearly green.) So instead of a dealy, time to dig up some awesome YouTube music videos.

Okay, this is one of the few videos that mega acclaimed indie-folk artist Sufjan Stevens has made. From his 2003 release Greetings from Michigan, The Great Lakes State, here is a literal interpretation -- and I do mean literal -- for his song "Wolverine." And while Sufjan's songs tend to be serious, the guy also has a fun, weird sense of humor that's definitely on display here.

Sufjan Stevens - "Wolverine"


Next up is a name that sounds like a Japanese duo despite the fact that they're a four-piece band from Brighton, England. Fujiya & Miyagi run on calm rhythms and nursery rhyme-like lyrics to make a pretty enjoyable chill-out band. The video that I have is "Ankle Injuries" from their 2006 Transparent Things record and the aesthetic of the video is similar to The White Stripes' "Fell In Love With A Girl" video, only with dominoes instead of Lego blocks.

Fujiya & Miyagi - "Ankle Injuries"


Finally, this last video is from a Canadian electronic artist known as Caribou. The song is a sedated number called "Irene." This effort is more quiet than most of Caribou's other efforts, the video featuring a nice mix of Canadian wildlife kind of fits it. It's not really a video for everyone -- though, it's not like any of these videos really are -- but the video is a nice five-minute distraction.

Caribou - "Irene"


Have a cool post-Election Day Wednesday and stay classy.

I'm sorry, I really don't like The Killers.

Okay, this post might need a bit of explaining. Around four years ago, I was an unwitting pop music connoisseur. I was exiting my phase of listening to such mind-expanding acts as Limp Bizkit and Nelly, and I latched on to this band from Las Vegas that really really wanted to sound like British New Wave. This band is The Killers, and something attracted me to their heartwarming tales about how someone told the vocalist that his girlfriend had a boyfriend that looked like a girlfriend he had around January. As well as time, truth, and hearts.

Now, I'll gladly admit that I enjoyed this pap in 2004. However, this attempt to remake New Wave's music in a sort of redundant New New Wave has out and out failed. The lyrics of The Killers either make no sense at all or they are horribly overwritten and pretentious. Everything runs as some sort of symbolism that's always overdone. And ultimately, their songs can be split into two categories. They either focus on seducing a girl -- or boy since vocalist Brandon Flowers remembers that new wave groups always hinted at being gay -- or the "glamour" of indie rock, which is something of an oxymoron. The following are actual lines from the group's songs.

They say the devil's water/It ain't so sweet/You don't have to drink right now/But you can dip your feet/Every once in a little while

I pull up to the front of your driveway/With magic soakin' my spine

Racey days/Help me through the hopeless haze/But my oh my/Tragic eyes/I can't even recognize myself behind

And the most inane, from the chorus of their newest single "Human."

Are we human or are we dancer?

Really. I'm being serious, that is an actual line in a song. God, I can't stand this band. And the thing is, I own Hot Fuss. I checked out Sawdust and don't mind "Read My Mind" from Sam's Town only because it is the only tolerable thing on an album that manages to be horrible at not just creating poor lyrics. It manages to fail at any of the things it tries, such as mixing its already silly New New Wave sound with arena rock.

When Duran Duran talked about being "Hungry Like The Wolf," you got that it was the lead singer showing his sexual frustration followed by his desire for some random street walker. Or just being hungry. Either way, it wasn't entirely nonsensical, even if the song was horribly cheesy.

However, Flowers and his constant need for silly symbolism always falls apart at the seams. He puts a ridiculous amount of Christian imagery in "When You Were Young" when the entire point of the song is supposed to be falling in love (or probably just having sex) with a guy. And come on, he actually used the line "Are we human or are we dancer?" in a song. It's not like we're talking about a guy who's had a couple of cases of bad lyrical craftsmanship.

And I don't even hate the new new wave movement, as redundant and silly as it is. I do listen to a group like The Bravery from time to time, and even if The Bravery is as guilty of silly lyrics, they aren't nearly as epically pretentious with their efforts. And they also didn't butcher Joy Division's "Shadowplay" either.

Actually, you know what. Maybe I can sum this post up in one sentence: The fact that Sawdust exists is probably a sign of the apocalypse.

Pitching to a Person, as told by a Bear.

Imagine, if you will, a sunny day on the shores of your favorite beach. The waves rock back and forth with the same pace. The beach is remarkably empty for such a beautiful summer day. Suddenly, you hear the noise of train tracks fade into what sounds like a marching band that more or less repeats the same two notes. Even stranger, a fully clothed man pops out of the water with a skateboard in his hand. I'm sure this sounds like the oddest dream you've never had, but as it turns out, thankfully this is merely the opening shots of "Comfy in Nautica" by Panda Bear.



Panda Bear's known to his family as Noah Lennox, and might be known to some hazier guys as the vocalist of the collective known as...well, Animal Collective. The aforementioned "Comfy in Nautica," however, comes from a solo effort released in 2007 called Person Pitch. Person Pitch contains seven songs and yet runs at forty-five minutes in length. This is due to the fact that two songs ("Bros" and "Good Girl/Carrots") extend past the ten minute mark. And they might be the most adventurous forty-five minutes you will ever hear in current-era music, bar none.

Person Pitch's charm is in the sample-based style that Lennox uses to construct his songs. When you think "sample-based music," a ton of hip-hop songs comes to mind, but Lennox plays with his artform. He has no problem sticking the rhythm of train tracks or any other noisy rhythm to fade into his 60s style rhythms. Lennox also boasts a voice reminiscent of Beach Boys vocalist and tragic icon Brian Wilson, one that soothingly blends with the mix of noise and music.

Lennox's genius is the mere fact that he's making pop music his own way. If this was any other average musician, the effort would be forced and disastrous. However, an effort like say "Take Pills" succeeds in that Lennox adds a brilliant pop chorus to the mix. This partly proves that while his efforts are experimental, they always have an eye for craftsmanship. He isn't entirely adding a train track or an owl's whoo just for kicks.

Well, he might. But that's the beauty of Person Pitch, even when you suspect Lennox is messing with your head, you're totally sucked in and ready to see where the musical path goes next.

Selling Out and Metallica. (What a new sentiment.)

About a month and a half ago, there was this little album called Death Magnetic from this band that obviously no one ever heard of called Metallica. While most critics had a nice amount of praise put onto the record, most listeners (read: a couple of friends that I talked about the album with) had a more mixed response. Reasoning for thinking this album is simply just an okay record range from the tired criticism that bassist Rob Trujillo will never be Cliff Burton to the more interesting criticism that a band that's sold out like Metallica cannot suddenly come back to greatness.

Now the first point is both accurate and incorrect at the same time. Of course Trujillo is not or sounds anything like Cliff Burton by any stretch of the imagination, but this is a tired point because Burton never lived long enough for people to judge whether he would be so idolized and great in the 1990s incarnation of Metallica, either. Kind of hard to say that Burton would be such a bass guitar legend to people if he didn't have to record Reload or Load, you know?

But I digress, this post really has nothing at all to do with Cliff Burton. Rather, it's more about the nature of "selling out" and how that changes the perception of the hardcore fans. Not too long ago, a friend of mine noted to me that he loved Hoobastank's Every Man for Himself record released around 2006. This record was much ballyhooed at the time because the band was two years gone from the release of their most successful (and in turn most annoying) single "The Reason." Not to mention, I'm sure anyone who saw Hoobastank in the late 1990s during their alt metal/funk metal phase was long gone and not hearing the record's album-long rant about not making another song like "The Reason."

Perhaps as "hardcore music junkies," we are supposed to slag off bands for when they go for a broader audience because we're a bunch of misfits and the "broader audience" is much like the popular crowd. If you've been around a high school long enough, you've obviously noticed the vocal few people that seem to hate everyone else that's more popular at that school, whether it be for how they dress or what they like to do or whatever. And certainly none of them can stand when a band suddenly becomes huge and everyone, including those kids who could care less about this group a short while earlier, thinks they're the bee's knees.

This isn't to say to lighten up about the issue. I'll definitely make the argument that a ton of albums that have occurred after a band has "broken through" have been downright awful.

Case in point, Metallica's St. Anger.

But it isn't to say that the all hope is lost for the band, either.

Case in point, Metallica's Death Magnetic.

Death Magnetic is an odd case because the band more or less is going back to an older sound despite the fact that the grittiness of that sound and the albums it created surely is lost on these rich old kooks. Right? Not quite. If anything, Death Magnetic re-affirms what is great about the older records and in turn what is great about Metallica when everything is on, and that's the stories of the songs. While Hetfield never matches his songwriting of the late 80s works, a number like "The Unforgiven III" pens a well-written seafaring tale all the same. While they'll never write anything as indicting as "Disposable Heroes" once again, no one person should always compare the past to the present just because perfectly solid material doesn't meet up to classic standards.

In turn, Metallica has done something I never expected to happen again. They have made perfectly solid material that I enjoy and don't shudder at hearing again and again. Once again, I don't think I'm going to suddenly say that "The End of the Line" is as well-written as "Master of Puppets" any time in history, but this does not change the perception of solid music.

And you know what, I can live with solid music. It's much like anything in life. If you turn your back on something only to rediscover that while it is flawed, it is a perfectly good thing, you take that as a minor victory. And life is a lot cooler to live, when you allow yourself some minor victories.

Video for "The Day That Never Comes."