American Hi-Fi
Feel good corporate pop rock isn't really
my bag, baby. Any number of utterances of the word "fuck" isn't
going to throw me off the scent and make me think I'm dealing
with serious art here. American Hi-Fi tries to blend Weezer
with any number of 80's power pop metal bands. The end result
is an underdeveloped, overproduced mish mash of boring pop and
weak sing-along anthems. The formula is, well, formulaic.
The irony is waist deep on the song "Hi-Fi Killer" on which
they skewer radio rock and say it all sounds the same. Um, dudes,
it's time to check the man in the mirror. |
The Art of Losing
I have a personal investment in this one.
No, I didn't actually pay for the album, but we did build the
website for it--and it took longer to build than the band lasted
after releasing this bomb on the world. Island
Records dropped them so fast we hadn't even finished the
tweaks to the site. I'm not sure what they were expecting, but
apparently it wasn't a whiny album filled with an older guy
singing catchy pop songs about breaking up and stuff. Of course,
several of the songs lived on in commercials (as so many failed
pop songs do), but managed to almost completely skip the radio.
It's funny, as the album is actually reasonably infectious,
but I understand that a lot of people can't stand the lead singer's
voice or the fact a thirty-something-year-old guy is saying
"fuck" a lot and namechecking bands way cooler than his. The
album is just a bunch of "singles" thrown together, rather than
a coherent album. The album is perfect in ten second snippets
(in other words, perfect for beer commercials), but as an album
it's about as real as a deed for the Brooklyn Bridge. I guess
being the drummer in Letters
to Cleo and Veruca Salt wasn't
enough cachet to keep this band going. |
Musical Connections:
Letters to
Cleo
Veruca Salt
|
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