Article #2 in the Best and Worst Music of 2006 series
You like an artist. You hear they are going to release a new album. You get excited. You download tracks prior to release. “Hmm, this can’t be right. Maybe they are fakes?”. You look for a better source. You start hearing tracks on the radio. You listen to the CD in the store.
Oh, it is crap.
Yes, this is a list of five artists that disappointed me this year. Those I expected to do better.
5. Let’s Get Out of This Country (Camera Obscura)
Yes it’s much more of the same from the Scottish pop group. Some tracks amp it up from Underachievers Please Try Harder (2003) with dangerously twee-loud drums and soaring strings. Tracyanne Campbell’s lyrics and voice make this a melancholic listen. None of this is new territory for Camera Obscura, but I can’t help but feel that they’ve taken one step backward. They aren’t advancing their art, and they don’t seem to be hitting the same highs as before.
4. State of Emergency (The Living End)
Australia’s The Living End continue their generic FM rock band slide. You know the type: minimal progressions, repeated lyrics, clichéd lyrics. The stand-out track, What’s On Your Radio? starts well with interesting staccato guitar and drum but degrades to oh-too-familiar territory. Have they run out of ideas? It’s not that the other tracks are completely featureless or devoid of merit, but I would expect that a band that has been around for as long as The Living End would at least to manage more two interesting tracks for an album.
3. Pearl Jam (Pearl Jam)
Many would argue that Pearl Jam are well past their prime and best viewed as if they stopped making records some time ago. When they are good, they are awesome. When they are bad they are as bad as one of the horde of Pearl Jam-wannabe bands spawned since Ten in 1991. This self-titled album is a return to rock after the softer, more thoughtful (and underrated) Riot Act (2002). I’m not sure if I was hoping for Riot Act but better, or Vitalogy but better, but Pearl Jam is clearly neither. It’s middle of the road bland rock, and Rolling Stone is on the nose candy if they think this is the best PJ album in a decade.
2. Personality (The Sleepy Jackson)
I don’t know him personally, but I’m starting to get the feeling that Luke Steele, head honcho of The Sleepy Jackson, is a lemon. The band has been through more members than guitarists’ picks. And then there’s that album cover. Rated by Pitchfork to be one of the worst of 2006 as well as nominated by the Australian Grammy equivalent, the ARIAs for best cover art. Getting past superficial concerns such as egos and covers, what about the music? Shit. Every song sounds the same. Steele sings with an omnipresent angelic choir behind him, ooohing and aaaahing along. This is annoying on the first song and gets downright infuriating by the last track.
1. The Outsider (DJ Shadow)
Let me first state that I have a very deep love of DJ Shadow in his many forms. Not only that Josh Davis is intelligent, thoughtful and is plain just a nice guy, this comes across time and time again. Massive respect. But lately Shadow has been sounding like a knob:
“Probably one of the most diverse records ever made” (03.08.06 Digest entry)
Davis declared before the release of the album that it wasn’t going to be a second Entroducing, that he is sick of going over the same ground. After the somewhat anonymously-released track 3 Freaks broke out of the Bay Area Shadow fans were rather aghast. Shadow fought back along the lines of
It’s hyphy! It’s the Bay sound! You wouldn’t understand if you’re not from here! Don’t you know 3 Freaks is massively respected… here. Bay Area!
In the post-release shitstorm he rather childishly said (paraphrasing here), well, if you don’t like my new sound you’re not a DJ Shadow fan, you’re an Entroducing fan (03.08.06 Digest entry). There’s nothing wrong with change and indeed The Private Press (2002) was aesthetically different than the earlier albums, but change for change’s sake?
In this age of single-track downloads, the art form of the album is diminished, and indeed this album shows just how badly a CD full of different styles can sound. It’s quite the tour of genres including rap, pop, folk, instrumental hip-hop and rock, none done particularly well. While Shadow maintains that this is his most musically rich album yet, tracks come off sounding rather shallow or downright plastic, such as You Made It (which, by the way has the beginnings of a good Chemical Brothers track, but ends nowhere). It’s only because of his prior works of genius that DJ Shadow hasn’t been resigned to the scrap-heap, so hopefully he learns from this and gets on with making good music, of whatever style he chooses.
This is article #2 in a 2006 music wrap-up
