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For some reason when I loaded this album onto my favorite mp3 player for the first time, the order of the songs switched around – the album has some sort of bonus track action so it lists out two “track 1” options and blah blah blah I finally figured it out. Like just now. Ok, this isn’t a review on having my head up my ass.

Ok, so first time through I was stuck on “Dead Hearts” – I love the melody and the production… it really flows in and out giving it this…. Ghostly (oh bummer) feel? The struggle I had with the song was the eerie dialogue; “tell me everything that happened,” “they had lights inside their eyes”. I was expecting one of the voices to start talking about the evil orks and the nasty elvin warriors – I had this flash of some sort of concept album centered around a particularly rousing D&D game. Luckily this was not the case. At all.

The pop-ish melodies with hugely synthetic sounds are contagious, and the harmonies are fantastic. Very pretty – all of it. I find myself drawn to the “bonus” tracks – the remixes placed at the end of the album (but which play on my little mp3 device near the beginning because… well… because they apparently want to).

For the record, “The Last Song Ever Written” is my favorite song this week. ‘tis the bomb. Like the kids mean it.

I so needed that.

As with most of the reviews I’ve done for Music Boxer, I haven’t heard much if any of Minus the Bear’s previous work, but after soaking in Omni that could very well change.

I dropped this album into the music box (or however the kids say it these days – it was loaded on my mp3 player in the ’86 toyota I call the Monster Truck) and was kickin’ around town when it occurred to me I was in the most fabulous mood ever. Keeping it to the point, I attribute this moto-euphoria not to the leaky exhaust manifold or dehydration from the 103F temps with a busted AC, but to the hook-a-plenty sweet soul sounds of Minus the Bear. The groove they lay down is hugely contagious, and had I been alive in the 60’s (and had my mp3 player with Omni loaded) I would have been taking over the roller rink with some phat bell bottoms (dangly pom-pom things? Oh hells yes) and sequined roller skates to ALL of the tracks on Omni.

By the second time through I was singing along, and there is no sitting still to this album. I think I was even doing the clenched-fist-microphone (no, didn’t take it to the full look upward with the fist release to open hand move a la George Michael, but I could have. Just sayin’.) while driving around the Monster Truck. It’s just straight up fun, all day, every day. The production is thick, the range of instruments and sounds makes all the songs full and interesting…. and utterly diggable.

It was just what I needed.

I can tell that this is one of those albums that has some catchiness up front, and grows from there.

It’s definitely sticky, in a good way. Lotsa catchy hooks, yummy choruses, slayed bass guitars, and even the little jingly bells in the background of “This is the life”… gotta love it. Is that a standard ‘80s Casio keyboard drum sample at the beginning of “Something Good Can Work”? It totally works – of course it fades into a full sounding drum groove, though considering the lineup of the band lists Alex Trimble as responsible for “beats” I may not be too far off the Casio keyboard prognosis…

(Potentially dicey use of “prognosis” there, but I’m stickin’ with it. Wikipedia’s example of the word is “45% of patients with severe septic shock will die within 28 days.” Fuck that. How about 93% of listeners to Two Door Cinema Club will imagine getting their groove on with their love interest. Oh yeah…)

(I digress)

It’s a relatively new band, and I think as their first studio album they are kicking ass and taking names. Word on the streets is that the album was #22 in Ireland. Being from Northern Ireland (them, not me. I’m a euro-immigrant mutt born in the farmlands in the north) I would think the radio would have eaten this up. Maybe too pop inspired? Eh… whatever the reason, it’s definitely a head bobber.

I keep spacing out my attempt at a rating system where the metric is the number of songs that would work in videos staring the Beastie Boys in their “Sabotage” guises. Maybe because it sucks. If such a metric were adopted, this album would probably bomb. Time to figure out a new metric then.

I’ll get right on that.

I feel like with the big changes for Alkaline Trio – especially ditching (my words, not theirs) Epic and forming Heart & Skull in collaboration with Epitaph – that they would have some change to their sound. As far as I’m concerned, they didn’t; considering they fooking rock, that’s a good thing.

This Addiction is the first album on the new label, and it is a solid album at that. It debuted at #11 on the Billboard 200 – highest Alkaline Trio album charting to date… I have sneaking suspicion the band could care less about the Billboard 200, but there it is. Color me struggling for metrics.

The opening cut (titled “This Addiction” – go figure) is a little ditty about heroin, which is always a crowd pleaser. Ok, it uses heroin as a metaphor for love, which makes it even better. “Those others were like methadone” is the junky’s version of Eddie Murphy’s line “baby, I fucked her… I make LOVE to you” -> that just cracks me up. Of course, it’s an excellent metaphor, spoken most eloquently by the chorus “Go through withdrawal without you; Sick with this addiction in me.” Seriously.

So, to throw down, the album rocks. There are some mold-breaking moments – the trumpet in “Lead Poisoning” and the synthesizers in “Eating Me Alive” (also show up in “Draculina”) – and that’s cool. I’ve read that the album was slated to be some sort of return to their punk-rawk roots. It’s got their signature vocals and full polished distorted sound that we’ve come to love so it begs the question: when did they leave?

(Glad they didn’t.)

Holy shit. This band rocks. Seriously.

The opening keyboards and simple drums had me thinking that Doo Rag had gotten back together and had picked up a violinist/guitarist… Alas, ‘twas not the case.

Spoon’s 7th album, Transference, kicked my ass, took my name, and kicked it again. From the cool open to the album, to the fantastic transition between ‘The Mystery Zone’ and ‘Who Makes Your Money’, the fookin hot groove of the latter, the lyrical and piano smack-down of ‘Written In Reverse’ – “I’m writin’ this to ya in reverse. Someone better call a hearse.”

F’n. Love It.

While listening to this album I was visited by a vision, an epiphany, an inspired thought, whatever. What if a metric by which an album was judged was simply how many of the songs could be made into a music video staring the Beastie Boys dressed up in their ’70’s cop outfits from “Sabotage?” I think Transference would be 10 out of 11 (“Goodnight Laura” might pull it off, but it would involve Mike D and Ad-Rock kissing by a tree by a lake at sunset in those bad-ass aviator sunglasses, and I don’t think the world is ready for that yet). Ok, “Out Go the Lights” might be close, but I think an introspective 4:36 in a coffee shop with different shots of the Beasties sipping coffee and reflecting on… whatever. In the cop outfits. Sweet.

Spoon!
Not in the face!