The Last Little Life EP
What happened to the fun robotic thing? This
ain't Cold War music anymore; it's mid-nineties prog rock. It's
mellow folks in their mid-thirties making music for I don't
know who. It sounds like a less dynamic Traveling Wilburys with
some keyboard. I'd almost say it was kid-friendly in its sing-songy
cutesiness. Totally inoffensive and boring, my wallpaper might
enjoy mating with it. Take like a later Ben
Lee album and beat it within an inch of its life and you
have this EP. I'm not really sure what that means, but it isn't
good. I hope this was just kind of them testing the waters,
and that when/if they put out their next LP that it'll have
more life than this puny attempt at cliched barfiness. |
Return of the Rentals
Weezer really
never was the same after Matt Sharp left the band. Sharp took
with him all the quirky fun--and those wonderful keyboards.
The Rentals, in fact, are pretty dependent on those same Moogs,
which give them a kind of distinctive retro sound that when
paired with fuzzed out guitars and some sweet girl harmonies
make for a sound that was actually ahead of its time. It really
wasn't until several years after this album came out that the
80s revival hit its full stride, but these guys took the more
throw-back sounds of Weezer, paired then with the cuteness of
that dog and came out the other
end with this funny 80s meets Sputnik space-age persona that
was hipster before people really knew what hispsterism was.
Nerd-chic, maybe? "Friends of P" was their kind of one minor
hit, and even listening to it today brings waves of nostalgia
flowing back into the mushy parts of my brain--and makes me
want to see a Weezer reunion now worse than ever. C'mon, dorks,
unite! |
Musical Connections:
that dog
Weezer
|
Booze
& Grub
Hipster
Movie Reviews
Hipster
Book Reviews