songs that suck tremendously vol. 2

That's pretty topical, right there.

It's time for this again. Y'know what? I'm thinking the songs themselves may not be what teeters me to the edge of sanity, but, in fact, the atmosphere I often experience them. See, I occasionally dabble in the "not eating properly before work" school of thought, and as such, I experience bouts of extreme lethargy, as well as soul-scorching apathy gurgling up through me like magma, all to the toe-tapping bullshit excreted through the PA system. Don't get me wrong - I dislike these stupid fucking songs without pause - it's just the days at work in which I replace literally every word in said tracks with unreproducible tirades of profanity that truly drive me to writing these stupid lists.

Also, I find it funny, I guess. This is no exorcism.

1.) fun. - Some Nights

What the fuck is this. This sounds like something Disney curated Phil Collins to write for The Lion King. I thought the world was finally safe from white people's colonialization and defaming of world musics in 2012, but well, here's this - detached exoticism and all. I can barely remember fun.'s debut from the single time I spun it, but I remember it floating around in the baroque pop revival/neo-pop psychedelia realm, not this horseshit.


2.) fun. - We Are Young

Okay, so this doesn't really deserve to be on here. I mean, I certainly don't like it, but it's not something that cleaves the hemispheres of my brain with an un-lubed penis of rage. What IS notable about it, though, is that I was destined to never like it by some unselfconscious dude working at this anarcho/commie cafe-bookstore in Tucson, AZ. For close to 2 hours, he scrawled over the delicate nuances to the vocal lines with a fat, xylene-reeking black marker of a voice that could've passed for Roscoe Holcomb without talent. I sort of wanted him to die at the time.

3.) Nickelback - This Afternoon

This is the last Nickelback song I'm ever going to post, as there's really no need to further the mind numbing nadir of placing this band at the crux of all things foul in rock music. Sure, Nickelback are vapid balladeers postured as the limpest final incarnate of grunge in the mainstream - the last "movement" offered even a sliver of credential from the hipster cognoscenti. On the other hand, you have an eternity of knowledge, wisdom, and opinion at your fingertips via the information age. The mainstream's bastardization of genre X shouldn't mean squat if you're not a total luddite. Chirality, motherfucker.
That said, this is the first song I've heard by them that treaded from "painfully inoffensive" territory to "aurally gruesome". Y'see, it's Nickelback's "fun" song, free of all the melodrama but none of the cheese. The video is actually even tackier than the song, surprisingly enough, full of eye-rolling sex appeal and cringe-worthy cliches. I remember someone on the 4chan music board describing this as "music for people who re-shingle roofs in the white lower class bracket". I suppose that's kind of offensive, though.

4.) Matchbox 20 - She's So Mean

A while back, I listed some cheesy solo Rob Thomas ballad alongside a bunch of other stool in a facebook post. Since I keep everything totally public, some contrarian a few degrees separate from me responded that I was way off the mark in not recognizing Thomas as the Sinatra of our generation. To this day, this comment stands as the least correct statement ever uttered in my presence.
I'm not sure where this temptation comes from, but there's literally an overwhelming desire to decree this "dorky". I mean, I get it - it's supposed to be kitsch. I still get the notion that if I were forced to dance to this in a public setting the embarrassment-turned-self-loathing would be too great for my being to withstand. Those drum fills proceeding the verses may as well be played with ladles full of velveeta fondue.

5.) Culture Club - Do You Really Want To Hurt Me

I'd make a lazy comment along the lines "yes, I do", but it seems likely the human race issued a moratorium on those sort of comments after the noxious fumes of a trillion stale jokes subsumed the planet 20 years ago. This is just synthy, bloopy nothingness. I don't know if I hate it as much as I'm baffled that it attained any sort of profile. Where are the hooks? Are they just in the wAcKy antics of Boy George that illuminated the band? 'Cause fuck this.

I think I'm gonna keep these posts down to 5 songs from now on. Doing 10 would probably reduce the quantity of bitching unsatisfactorily.

Came Out Swinging

First of all, give this song here a listen:

I literally knew nothing about this band prior to stumbling upon this song, excepting one lurid notion that they were spearheaders of that depressingly lousy "easycore" subgenre kicked off by mainstream luminaries New Found Glory circa 2000-something. If you're not "in the know", easycore is essentially a hi-fi, spotlighted pastiche of the gnarliest, most consumer-friendly bastardizations of pop-punk, melodic hardcore, and to varying degrees of misfortune, metalcore (for the pinnacle of this misfortune, see Chunk! No Captain Chunk). While I can't yet speak to the quality of The Wonder Years as a band, I have to admit, this is an incredibly solid track I've found stuck in my head for a week. While the sound is as full-bodied, high end and claustrophobically compressed as any given easycore staple, aside the brief flirtation with hardcore's gang chants, I see no real parallels to the Four Year Strong/Set Your Goals book of songcraft. In fact, this strikes me more as convergence point in which the stylistic progenitor's have finally clashed with the mainstream plunderers of said style, and honestly, it works really well.
That said, what most surprised me here was the relative depth of the lyrics. I realize the following sentiments are a redux of another recently disclosed sentiment of this blog, but I've observed the parameters for what I truly relish in pop-punk restrict notably over the past couple years. Much of the "guilty pleasure" shit I indulged in has been shaved down to sweet nothing, and almost every early classic has been all but phased out from the annual album rotation. Why the latter? Mostly the nauseating archaism of the lyrics. I don't need to hear boring sub-Ramones profundities about wanting to take a girl on a date, being a "lame-o" in the high school hierarchy and other caricature-esque encapsulations of youth culture. Who the fuck relates to this shit? I generally seek out pop-punk that can deliver an emotionally coddling, cathartic experience, so pretty much everything dancing about the universe of The Queers, Smoking Popes, Beatnik Termites, Ramones, Green Day, The Exploding Hearts, and The Mr. T Experience fall out outside my reach presently. This isn't to say these bands are entirely devoid of merits, but here's the deal: if music doesn't reverberate within me on a viscerally emotional level*, I likely frequent it's wares due to its fascinating anthropological/historical posturing, psychic usefulness, and out-of-time sound. Pop-Punk just generally doesn't interest me on that level, so I better curl my toes, throw up my fists and bite my bottom lip to it. It might be an embarrassing admission, but lines like this do me in:

I spent this year as a ghost and I'm not sure what I'm looking for
I'm a voice on a phone that you rarely answer anymore
I came in here alone
Came in here alone
But that doesn't scare me like it did seven months ago
I spent this year as a ghost and I'm not sure where home is anymore

I came out swinging from a South Philly basement
Caked in stale beer and sweat under half-lit fluorescents
I spent the winter writing songs about getting better
And if I'm being honest, I'm getting there

(*if you're getting hung up on the term "emotional" here i.e. "all music is emotional" then try to focus on the context - a cultural niche where "emo" is a subgenre of music)

On an unrelated note, have you heard the new Gaslight Anthem single, "45"? I've strayed pretty far from the band since 2008's The '59 Sound put me in a coma (yes, how controversial), but I ended up hearing this a number of times whilst slaying minutes digging for unlikely gems in the local FYE, of all places. While the song is certainly solid and devoid of that shitty, reverb-on-fucking-everything Springsteen/Replacements production style, the greatest gift it gave was reminding me how great Tilt was. How? Listen to the chorus. Wouldn't it sound way better with an upward lift in the vocals?

You hear the similarity there, right? No? Then I guess that was drawing a long bow, but it is where my brain guided me. Somehow I imagine re-igniting interest in Tilt wasn't the band's intention here, but I'm glad it did. I should cover this troupe here; they wrote a ton of amazing, bass-heavy pop-punk anthems that go relatively unheard nowadays, perhaps due to their lackluster 3rd and 4th LPs.

Yeah, actually, listening to them back-to-back sort of invalidates this entire section of the post.

Dammit, I never know how to end posts.

songs that suck tremendously vol. 1

The rewards I've reaped from servicing you at the local grocery store for the past 7 years have been great, but there is one thing I've earned that trumps them all: a refined, ever-developing loathing for popular music. But see, I'm not that guy who argues the vapidness of radio pop, taking a mere distaste for it into the territory of socio/psychoanalytical critique. I mainly just dislike being spattered with rank, wet feces whenever I step into my own dojos, let alone the dojos of others. To combat the interminable aggravation whenever Enya's "Sail Away" or Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocketful Of Sunshine" decided to catch a ride on my mental Möbius strip, I started collecting these fuckawful songs for quarantine list. 

HERE IS MY STORY:

1.) Gotye - Somebody That I Used To Know

I just discovered this one today and already my hatred for it could sink continents. I don't know what this shit is supposed to be, but it has all the art & atmosphere of New Age FM pop radio. 
2.) Adele - Rumor Has It

Holy shit, fuck this earsmegma. Worst chorus I can currently think of.

3.) Bruno Mars - Grenade

Whenever I'm blessed enough to have this flaccid penis brigade marching through my head, I like to extend the severity of the sacrifices he describes to vile heights. "I'd skullfuck an infant to death" and "I'd pull off my face and eat it until I died" are my favorite additions, thus far, but we'll see where the road takes us.

4.) Train - Drive-By

I guess "Hey Soul Sister" wasn't just a fluke in a canon of otherwise listenable songs.

5.) Train - Hey Soul Sister

Which reminds me...

6.) Daniel Powter - You Had A Bad Day

No one on earth needs to hear this song again, even if they liked it at some point.

7.) LeAnn Rimes - How Do I Live

FUCK YOU LEANN RIMES PT 2

("Fuck You LeAnn Rimes Pt 1" was "Can't Fight The Moonlight")

8.) Sheryl Crow - Soak Up The Sun

I don't even know why I hate this song so much, but fuck, man. Also, I can only run it through my head as "Iiiiii'm gonna soak up the cuuuuummmmm". People generally don't exchange currency for semen, either, so the lyric still suits the song's theme. I'm pretty awesome.

9.) Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe

This is probably the most hatefuckingly effective hook I've ever heard. That keyboard line is like psychic assault. I want to take a dump on her face and not in a fetishistic way. No one should hit 26 years of age and still find it in them to write something this tween-y unless they're relegating their career focus to making money off of children.
Actually, that's not an unrealistic assumption.

10.) La Bouche - Be My Lover

The sound of erect penises being struck by lightning.

TUNE IN WHENEVER I POST MORE FOR MORE.

revisiting Sunny Day Real Estate in 2012

Sunny Day Real Estate were a 4-piece from Seattle, Washington who were "the first emo band, along with Weezer", you state, embarrassingly. Actually, though, if you're looking for the source of ahistorical claims like the preceding, this is probably where you'd start. Prior to this troupe's arrival on the mainstream landing pad circa '94, music termed "emo" (endearingly or not) was pretty much exclusively relegated to dingy basement shows and channeled through bands burnt out on the pogo-thrash of the early 80's. I probably don't need to give you a history lesson (since you're on the internet), but essentially, Ian Mackaye and co. decided the genre they helped establish was becoming too much of a warzone for dumb, chipped-shoulder pit warriors and went on a mission to become the cool, damp rag patting the forehead of worked-up suburbanite white dudes everywhere. The hardcore scene, not knowing what to make of bands like Embrace, Rites Of Spring, and Dag Nasty, split them off from the catalyst with the mocking term "emocore" - a signifier that these bands often employed emotions, unlike hardcore punk, which was like listening to a home appliance user's manual.
Okay, and I guess they were also prone to utilizing more rock-oriented tempos and guitarwork, as well.
 Around the dawn of the 90's the post-hardcore sound began to evolve frenetically and diverge into several disparate styles, embracing and expounding upon different facets of the style while drawing from surrounding scenes. From here, alongside the chaotic, shredding violence of bands like Honeywell and Heroin, and the epic, dynamics-laden approach of Moss Icon, Native Nod, and Hoover, came a smoother, much more accessible brand of emo that straddled the line between post-hardcore and indie rock. The most influential (ie mercilessly looted) example being Sunny Day Real Estate.
...like, Hot Water Music levels of imitation. Fugazi tier mimicry. It's probably grammatically incorrect to expand an aside hidden between parentheses like this, but the world is a crazy place.
After a couple EPs firmly footed in the underground sounds of the day, the band enlisted their friend Jeremy Enigk for guitar/frontman position, effectively clubbing the band's rawness into submission with a mace of distinctive mellow weenie vocals. Such is written in the Book Of Speculations. They went on to release two excellent LPs on Sub-Pop, the second of which sounds surprisingly refined for a snapshot of the band disintegrating in the immolating light of God's love. Unfortunately, they then released two more following Jeremy's conversion, replete with singing lessons, a faux-British accent, and a glaze of putrid alt-rock shellac.

That was what they call in "the biz" "an introduction that's too long to bother reading". This exists beyond my usual snooze-inducing self-depreciating tirades, as I literally only began writing this to point to share my current opinion of the band after some much needed time off. Like Rites Of Spring's s/t LP, I flogged their Diary album next to constantly for close to 6 months before it finally passed on due to a shattered will to live. That was a joke because I used the term "flogged" as a hyperbole for "listened to". Oh, ritualistic, prolonged torture jokes and their hilarity. Anyway, I just recently gave their debut and self-titled follow-up a re-review and I couldn't help but notice that despite how solid and effective they remain, Diary has a completely bizarre quirk to it that I totally overlooked back in the day.
Okay listen to this song:

This was probably my favorite song back in 11th grade. I still love it a lot. But hey, did you ever notice that at almost exactly halfway through the song, THE SONG STARTS AGAIN ALMOST EXACTLY AS IT BEGAN? I was going to italicize that last bit, but comedically timed caps lock seemed more appropriate. As you can tell, I'm entering a "painfully ironic" phase for everyone to revel in. But seriously, it's almost perfectly split into two near identical halves. What's even more bewildering is the fact that almost every song on here does the exact same thing. Go listen to "Seven" next. After that intro, the same EXACT verse is repeated, note for note, word for word, 3 times. Why? The structure is this:
1.) Intro
2.) Verse 1
3.) Bridge 1
4.) Verse 1
5.) Bridge1
6.) Chorus
7.) Verse 1 (really)
8.) Bridge (also identical)
9.) Chorus (and such and such)
I don't even mean this as a dig on the band, necessarily... I just don't know what to make of it. The more I listened with this principle in mind, the more I began to see it - near savant-esque rigidity and repetition. "Round" is exactly like this. "47" is exactly like this. Actually, from what I can recall (I don't have the album in front of me right now), nearly every song is structured like the band wrote a bunch of different song components and piled them up in the most logical progression. There's no room for improvisation, looseness, or ad libbing whatsoever. "But Steve", you might be saying, "aren't most pop song structures like this?". Well, yeah, but most of those songs aren't 5 minutes long and have no crescendos. In essence, Sunny Day Real Estate were pretty curious/awful editors at this point, but the chunks of music they comprised their songs from were all pretty spectacular.

LP2 (aka Sunny Day Real Estate aka "The Pink Album") is generally better but doesn't quite crush my heart/tear ducts with the nostalgia/tension-release vice its predecessor employs. It doesn't sound like a new, emotionally terse galaxy being born, but the songwriting is a lot less "what the fuck" and the dynamics aren't as obvious. I think I need to give this a few more spins before filing it back away, but I can say this: for what is essentially an odds 'n' flgqwads collection-gone-proper-album, it's an amazingly consistent and understated album.

I just realized why I don't update here as much as my old blog.

No amphetamines.

(frowny emoticon)