Episode 1448 is up
July 8, 2010Episode 1447 is up
July 7, 2010Sia “We Are Born”
July 6, 2010The late ’80s pop revival continues with Sia. “You’ve Changed” jumps out at me like a car commercial. I have a sudden urge to take advantage of 0% financing and loyalty cash back. If you were lucky enough to have a child at 14, then you’re both the right age to appreciate this album.
A pretty penny was spent on the production of this record, but as a lover of overproduced crap, I am quite happy to reap the benefits. “Bring Night” is peppy and upbeat. “Hurting Me Now” is much more contemporary and surely is performed live at every show. (As polished as this is, I think “concert” may indeed be more accurate. Zounds!)
“Oh Father” does the Colbie Caillat thing. Oh, wait. This is a Madonna cover. No wonder. Thanks for making me feel old, Sia!
There’s nothing wrong with this record, but it doesn’t do anything unprecedented, and the term “soul searching” doesn’t come to mind.
Picture Me Broken “Wide Awake”
July 6, 2010It’s a Lita Ford kind of thing, except the backing band looks like they escaped from a Justin Bieber record release party. Throw in equal parts metal-infused Evanescence and Living Colour, and that’s what you get with Picture Me Broken.
The band clearly wants to be taken seriously, and the least I can do is to respect their wishes. The music is as complex as a seven-layer dip — there’s a lot going on, but it doesn’t surprise. I think this is what Damone wants to do, and they’re going to keep reinventing themselves until they do it. Did I say Damone? Did I mean the Donnas? Well, both, really.
“Echoes of an Empire” is a typical track. The vocals are strong, which is notable because you can get downright lazy when you have a metal score underneath. She must have had Pat Benatar records growing up, even if they were her mother’s. The sound is quite established, which is a nice way of saying all the songs sound the same. Fine. We all have to start somewhere. I want to know what happens next.
“Skin & Bones” and “Darwin’s Song” are a little too over the top for me. There’s rocking out with your cock out, and then there’s going crazy for the sake of going crazy. Hopefully they will figure this out. No one is saying to sound like Halou, but there are some i’s to dot and t’s to cross.
“Nerds & Cigarettes” uses the Auto-Tune that the kids love. Sure, why not. The deeper you get into this record, the less sense it makes. Maybe that’s the point.
Pretty Hideous “Balance”
July 6, 2010It’s annoying when you get a record, and it says there are explicit lyrics, yet the lyrics are not included, and because the album is self-promoted, it is missing one of those stickers that tells you which tracks have swearing on it. That’s a compound-complex sentence.
I mean, I am going to listen to the whole fucking thing anyway, but why are you making it hard on me? I can’t even laugh at saying “hard on” because I am so paranoid that I am going to miss something and get the station in trouble.
So this is a decidedly late ’90s-sounding piece, referencing an era that music tends to forget about. I hear hints of Butthole Surfers, Nine Inch Nails and Ruby. I bet people think they sound like Portishead. The sound is too sharp to sound like them, but I am sure that that is what people think. “Mercury” comes to mind, specifically.
I also like “Scattered.” If American Idol contestants would sing songs such as this one (and they could — it is not a fundamentally hard song to perform), I would actually watch. It’s not overly ambitious, but it doesn’t leave you with that mealy mouth feeling that a lot of modern pop songs have. Maybe because this ain’t no modern pop song.
“Serio” has those synthy bells I love so much, although the guitar seems misplaced. Yeah, it sounds like the late 1990s, all right. Bettie Serveert thought about this angle for a bit and then thought better. It is definitely an underserved niche, musically speaking, so I am sure a lot of people would receive this with open arms, if they only knew about it.
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