The halfway point-The Best of 2009 music (or lack)
Is it just me or is the music of this year simply sucks?
So far this year I have reviewed 43 albums of varying degree. Mainly as background noise or forgettible I have really yet to hear an album that grabbed my attention all the way through. And while Rolling Stone or SPIN tout the next best thing or when somebody at About.com tells me about the next big thing I have to wonder if the reviewer has their hearing aid turned on.
I've tried to listen to the next big thing bands such as the overrated Animal Collective or Fleet Foxes, tried to jump on the bandwagon of Sliverstein Pickups whose album grates on annoyance and ended up wondering WTF did I just hear. I also got suckered into hearing the latest Hoobastank bomb called For(n)ever and be happy to tell you that Hoobastank's time has finally ran out on them. Their kind of rock and roll has been dead for the past five years. Even new country music has ran into a identity crisis from the overrated Zac Brown Band who continue to insult our intelligence with their Hallmark style country that makes Lonestar look like The Mavericks. Gone are the days of drinking and gambling and two timers replaced by fairy tales, bad rapping about fishing and five year olds saying naughty words. Now we have Lady Antebellum clones (two guys in need of a shave and a pinup girl) with enough staying power as stale bubblegum. And while the Nashville traditionist are bitching about the Taylor Swift Thug Life, the question remains do I really want to listen to it? And don't get me started on the dead in the water format known as Top Forty radio, I've heard enuff autotonedeaf rappers and their crap and the only rap song I remember has the beginning of Chicago's Street Player as a sample and then more bad rapping. Don't ask me who the rapper was, don't care to know and whoever it is will be forgotten by year's end anyway.
It's enough for a music lover to throw in the towel and ever forget buying a new album ever again. The major labels serve up dreck, the radio plays dreck and the music lover suffers due to lack of good music on the radio. Even old reliable acts have given us forgettible albums. Neko Case comes to mind. With the New Pornographers she's a savior, as a solo artist I listen and forget what just played. The Fleet Foxes, supposely the second coming of CSNY but all I hear is My Morning Jacket more mellow. Is Animal Collective that good as people claimed? I donno, I think I perfer Tangerine Dream myself in terms of that kind of music. I used to be a big Green Day fan but their lastest I tend to agree that it's overproduced, overrecorded and overplayed that GD finally became the big pompous band of this decade after starting out just fine with their Warning record. Sure sucks getting old, once started out putting out half hour albums that rock hard, they're now putting out 70 plus minites and trying too hard to make a statement and don't rock enuff. Even the hype that came with Steve Earle's Townes album made the album more than what it was and in the end, it became the second Steve Earle record that disappointed me the more I played it. I haven't given up on Earle just yet but the future reminds me more that James McMurtry is the one that I should keep up more often.
Music today isn't as memorable as it once was. Yesterday I was listening to the Rolling Stones 1989 flop classic Steel Wheels and find it sounding much better today than back then. Back then we didn't have the internet, cellphones or downloading and MTV still played music videos. Today, we have DVDs, or Wii or XBOX for our downtime so it seems that music is now an afterthought. Even My Space can't guarantee you extra plays or making it big anymore, nor radio. Radio is dead due to dead formats or dead playlists that haven't changed since Nirvana's Nevermind. Even I can't tell you whose the next big thing, what they tout in the music mags I have no clue or don't care. Mark Prindle doesn't either so in his website he puts all the new bands under Bands That Kids Dig,which means he probabaly quit caring all along too. My glory period remains the late 60s and most of the 70s, that's where most of the top ten songs of the week come from. In the old days, albums went up the chart, nowadays they fall down the chart after release and most are forgotten by year's end anyway. Another outdated format from Soundscan.
So basically, with most new acts stinking up the speakers, this year I've followed the old bands that I grew up with, all now approaching senior citizen age or getting there. A lotta bands that i have reviewed this year are over fifty. UFO, Uriah Heep, Judas Priest, Bob Dylan and the over seventy gang; Leonard Cohen, Willie Nelson, Marianne Faithfull (she's not 70 but does sound like she is). JJ Cale, who actually made one of the better albums of this year and 64 year old Neil Young whose Fork In The Road came out in April is now a forgotten piece four months later. Although I'm sure getting his big Archives box set would have been fun, economically, 300 bucks to pony up to get a blu ray and having it looking like a doorstop wasn't cost effective, nor was his DVD and CD boxsets either. And I don't have a Blu Ray disc player anyway.
Can't say I was disappointed with Fork In The Road, but the digipak pissed me off enuff to take two points off the original grade and this year digipaks seem to rule the roost. Which meant I decided not to review a lotta albums using that format. Getting a paper cut just by opening the damn thing is automatic point deduction. And I don't like the oversized ones from Wicked Cool either. Either put it out on vinyl if you must and spare us the oversizing, an oversized digipak album doesn't fit on most cd storage cases. And 14 out of the 42 albums reviewed were stored in the dammed digipak and half of those got traded in.
But being a good sport I did review albums if and when I saw fit. Like Keith Urban's last album so took a chance with his Defying Gravity and was less impressed with the results. Ready made country hits for now radio but mostly not as memorable. And God bless Brad Paisley, great guitar player like Urban but can't seem to make a album that gets very so sugary, you end up getting dibeates soon afterward so I guess I have given up on reviewing anything from him ever. Plus his goatee he can't grow anyway, makes him look more stupid. But I also was disappointed in the latest Tommy Keene album as well, how can somebody that made quality albums back in the 80s and 90s turn around and make two subpar albums in a row? Must have been the digipak, played it three times and traded it in. UFO is still around and managed to make a new album before their record label went bankrupt and like the previous two ho hum. Contrary to rumour Phil Mogg simply can't sing anymore, just like Stephen Stills on the CSNY Deja Vu Live album. Neither can Bob Dylan but Together Through Life had enough music to make it worth listening to thoughout. Marianne Faithfull still has enough range in her voice to make Easy Come East Go a worthy listen to. But I donno if Robert Christgau overrated her album simply of historic value rather than the album itself. It's not a A album in my book, but perhaps a worthy B or weak B plus. Haven't given up on it yet but I cringe upon hearing Antony wobble through Ooh Baby Baby.
Perhaps Christgau had it right on Leonard Cohen's Live In London to which Cohen who cant sing much either managed to put out a 2 cd live classic of his hits that go for 2 and a half hours on 2 CDs. But in the end, this year won't go down as one of the finest years for music either. Especially if my favorite record so far is Queensryche's American Soldier album that came out in April. But will it remain the best of a forgettible year of music? Tune in five months from now at this point and we can compare notes then. But I can guarantee you that whoever makes the best won't be The Fleet Foxes nor The Bird And The Bee or Animal Collective or anything that is the flavor of the hour.
The top ten best of may as well be the albums that I played more than twice this year.
So far this year I have reviewed 43 albums of varying degree. Mainly as background noise or forgettible I have really yet to hear an album that grabbed my attention all the way through. And while Rolling Stone or SPIN tout the next best thing or when somebody at About.com tells me about the next big thing I have to wonder if the reviewer has their hearing aid turned on.
I've tried to listen to the next big thing bands such as the overrated Animal Collective or Fleet Foxes, tried to jump on the bandwagon of Sliverstein Pickups whose album grates on annoyance and ended up wondering WTF did I just hear. I also got suckered into hearing the latest Hoobastank bomb called For(n)ever and be happy to tell you that Hoobastank's time has finally ran out on them. Their kind of rock and roll has been dead for the past five years. Even new country music has ran into a identity crisis from the overrated Zac Brown Band who continue to insult our intelligence with their Hallmark style country that makes Lonestar look like The Mavericks. Gone are the days of drinking and gambling and two timers replaced by fairy tales, bad rapping about fishing and five year olds saying naughty words. Now we have Lady Antebellum clones (two guys in need of a shave and a pinup girl) with enough staying power as stale bubblegum. And while the Nashville traditionist are bitching about the Taylor Swift Thug Life, the question remains do I really want to listen to it? And don't get me started on the dead in the water format known as Top Forty radio, I've heard enuff autotonedeaf rappers and their crap and the only rap song I remember has the beginning of Chicago's Street Player as a sample and then more bad rapping. Don't ask me who the rapper was, don't care to know and whoever it is will be forgotten by year's end anyway.
It's enough for a music lover to throw in the towel and ever forget buying a new album ever again. The major labels serve up dreck, the radio plays dreck and the music lover suffers due to lack of good music on the radio. Even old reliable acts have given us forgettible albums. Neko Case comes to mind. With the New Pornographers she's a savior, as a solo artist I listen and forget what just played. The Fleet Foxes, supposely the second coming of CSNY but all I hear is My Morning Jacket more mellow. Is Animal Collective that good as people claimed? I donno, I think I perfer Tangerine Dream myself in terms of that kind of music. I used to be a big Green Day fan but their lastest I tend to agree that it's overproduced, overrecorded and overplayed that GD finally became the big pompous band of this decade after starting out just fine with their Warning record. Sure sucks getting old, once started out putting out half hour albums that rock hard, they're now putting out 70 plus minites and trying too hard to make a statement and don't rock enuff. Even the hype that came with Steve Earle's Townes album made the album more than what it was and in the end, it became the second Steve Earle record that disappointed me the more I played it. I haven't given up on Earle just yet but the future reminds me more that James McMurtry is the one that I should keep up more often.
Music today isn't as memorable as it once was. Yesterday I was listening to the Rolling Stones 1989 flop classic Steel Wheels and find it sounding much better today than back then. Back then we didn't have the internet, cellphones or downloading and MTV still played music videos. Today, we have DVDs, or Wii or XBOX for our downtime so it seems that music is now an afterthought. Even My Space can't guarantee you extra plays or making it big anymore, nor radio. Radio is dead due to dead formats or dead playlists that haven't changed since Nirvana's Nevermind. Even I can't tell you whose the next big thing, what they tout in the music mags I have no clue or don't care. Mark Prindle doesn't either so in his website he puts all the new bands under Bands That Kids Dig,which means he probabaly quit caring all along too. My glory period remains the late 60s and most of the 70s, that's where most of the top ten songs of the week come from. In the old days, albums went up the chart, nowadays they fall down the chart after release and most are forgotten by year's end anyway. Another outdated format from Soundscan.
So basically, with most new acts stinking up the speakers, this year I've followed the old bands that I grew up with, all now approaching senior citizen age or getting there. A lotta bands that i have reviewed this year are over fifty. UFO, Uriah Heep, Judas Priest, Bob Dylan and the over seventy gang; Leonard Cohen, Willie Nelson, Marianne Faithfull (she's not 70 but does sound like she is). JJ Cale, who actually made one of the better albums of this year and 64 year old Neil Young whose Fork In The Road came out in April is now a forgotten piece four months later. Although I'm sure getting his big Archives box set would have been fun, economically, 300 bucks to pony up to get a blu ray and having it looking like a doorstop wasn't cost effective, nor was his DVD and CD boxsets either. And I don't have a Blu Ray disc player anyway.
Can't say I was disappointed with Fork In The Road, but the digipak pissed me off enuff to take two points off the original grade and this year digipaks seem to rule the roost. Which meant I decided not to review a lotta albums using that format. Getting a paper cut just by opening the damn thing is automatic point deduction. And I don't like the oversized ones from Wicked Cool either. Either put it out on vinyl if you must and spare us the oversizing, an oversized digipak album doesn't fit on most cd storage cases. And 14 out of the 42 albums reviewed were stored in the dammed digipak and half of those got traded in.
But being a good sport I did review albums if and when I saw fit. Like Keith Urban's last album so took a chance with his Defying Gravity and was less impressed with the results. Ready made country hits for now radio but mostly not as memorable. And God bless Brad Paisley, great guitar player like Urban but can't seem to make a album that gets very so sugary, you end up getting dibeates soon afterward so I guess I have given up on reviewing anything from him ever. Plus his goatee he can't grow anyway, makes him look more stupid. But I also was disappointed in the latest Tommy Keene album as well, how can somebody that made quality albums back in the 80s and 90s turn around and make two subpar albums in a row? Must have been the digipak, played it three times and traded it in. UFO is still around and managed to make a new album before their record label went bankrupt and like the previous two ho hum. Contrary to rumour Phil Mogg simply can't sing anymore, just like Stephen Stills on the CSNY Deja Vu Live album. Neither can Bob Dylan but Together Through Life had enough music to make it worth listening to thoughout. Marianne Faithfull still has enough range in her voice to make Easy Come East Go a worthy listen to. But I donno if Robert Christgau overrated her album simply of historic value rather than the album itself. It's not a A album in my book, but perhaps a worthy B or weak B plus. Haven't given up on it yet but I cringe upon hearing Antony wobble through Ooh Baby Baby.
Perhaps Christgau had it right on Leonard Cohen's Live In London to which Cohen who cant sing much either managed to put out a 2 cd live classic of his hits that go for 2 and a half hours on 2 CDs. But in the end, this year won't go down as one of the finest years for music either. Especially if my favorite record so far is Queensryche's American Soldier album that came out in April. But will it remain the best of a forgettible year of music? Tune in five months from now at this point and we can compare notes then. But I can guarantee you that whoever makes the best won't be The Fleet Foxes nor The Bird And The Bee or Animal Collective or anything that is the flavor of the hour.
The top ten best of may as well be the albums that I played more than twice this year.
