Album Mini-Reviews

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The last month has brought releases from two of the very few artists that I've shelled out money for all their previous albums! Let's take a brief look at them.

These mini-reviews are based on ONE LISTEN ONLY, as I just got them.

311 - Uplifter: For a band that I've bought all their albums, I was really not all that excited for this one! Once avant-garde pushers of prog/metal/reggae/rap crushing creativity, their last few albums have shown a newfound propensity to just sit back, throw up some reggae beats, do a little harmonizing, and then every three or four songs, throw in a syncopated power-chord riff, and call it a day. Their last album, Don't Tread On Me, was unarguably their very worst and most lackluster to date, so anticipation of this one was not high.

Well. It's better than the last album. It's exactly as good as the one before that -- Evolver. In fact, it's not only exactly as good as that one, it is the exact same album. If I put those two albums on shuffle, you'd never be able to pick out which one was from which.

Same mixture of up-tempo pop-reggae sing-songiness, old riffs echoing their heyday in the '90s. "I bet the next one will be a mellow song." Mellow song. "I bet this one will start mellow and then go into a riff about 2/3 of the way through." Bam.

So, 311 is content to make the same album every single time now. If you like that album, this is your opportunity to buy it again.

**1/2

Eminem - Relapse: I thought he was done, but apparently he needed to come back four years after Encore and write an album about drugs. And that's what this is.

Not entirely about drugs, I should be honest. The songs breakdown like this:

75% of the songs are about addiction to prescription medication.

15% of the songs are about killing women.

10% of the songs are about weed, and/or busting on Britney and Christopher Reeve again.

So, for subject matter, Relapse gets no points for breaking any new ground.

But oh, so good to hear some new Em! Lest you think more years gone by have mellowed the boy, this is by far the most vile album he's done, in terms of lyrical content. There's a mean-ness, an unwillingness to flinch and say "ha, just kidding" here, that you only see in a few other spots in his library. People really should not listen to this stuff.

The interplay between phat beats and rhymes seems a little more straightforward on this album than albums past -- it's all extremely impressive, but not as many truly unbelievable moments. This album's attempt at an "inspiring" song, Beautiful, doesn't come close to equaling the Eminen Show's "My Dad's Gone Crazy", which still gives me goosebumps every time I hear it. This is a lesser album than that one.

But it's Em, and it's often disgusting, just as often hilarious, and it's solid.

***1/2

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Nobody cares about this:

On second listen, I'm bumping Uplifter up to 3 stars. It has has many disappointments as the last few albums, but the high points are higher.

I hate people who say "I used to think this album sucked but now it's my favorite!" so to the extent this post echoes that sentiment, please ignore it.

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Here are some illegal music links, so if you have any interest in the new 311 album, you can just download the highlights:

Jackpot - There seems to be one of these on every album now, the requisite hard-rocker, hearkening back to the "glory days". This is Uplifter's effort, which is pretty strong.

Golden Sunlight - This is the highlight of the entire album. Starts like a dreamy ballad, builds into a plaintive chorus of existential angst, and then segues into a bridge which is the best thing 311 has done in at least a decade. Combines to form something which a '90s 311 fan would scoff at, but which ends up being what feels like a culmination of all they've done before.

Nobody is reading this thread. That's okay.

[AArdvark]

Of course peoples are reading this thread! never heard of any of the aforementioned except for MM, and I don't do rap.

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I generally stick to white rap: Eminem, Beastie Boys, and MC Frontalot. The only black rap album I've ever liked was Fear of a Black Planet, by Public Enemy, which is probably still the only rap album the world ever required, and is still one of the best albums ever.

I love that Charles D.

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Also, I'm demoting Relapse to three stars, cuz I just re-listened to a bunch of the Marshall Mathers LP and the Eminem Show, and that shit was so fucking excellent that Relapse doesn't deserve to be within a half star of those four-star epics.

So, there ya go. Both albums, three stars. Enjoy.

[AArdvark]

This youngster gave me four CDs to listen to thinking that I might enjoy them.

Chevelle
POD
Revis
and 12 stones


Now I must listen and post here

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Mae - (m)orning EP
Link

Imagine, if you will, finding out that you love the genre of "pop punk" more than any other. You might want to keep that shit to yourself and never discuss it.

Now imagine you've got a pretty good handle on the acts in the genre, the labels involved, and the songs that are out there. You are imagining the hell that is my brain! I know this is trash music, but I can't care. My brain was wired a certain way, and I'm gonna feed it musically best I can.

If I made a list of all the songs I've introduced myself to in the last five years, and ranked them based on how much I liked them, I bet that 7 or 8 of the top 20 songs would be from Mae.

You can tell that Mae is a pop punk band, even though they may not really sound like one, because they have a HORRIBLE FUCKING BAND NAME.

Anyway, I want Mae-y stuff in the new Mae EP, and you get that quit well in two songs on this disc - Boomerang and Night/Day. Those two songs rank up there with the best music they've made.

I don't know how many stars to give this EP, since it's an EP and there's really only six songs on it. Two of them are out-fucking-standing and the other ones are at least listenable. But yeah, the two L@@K A++++++ songs in question I would definitely listen to again and again.