Rolling 2004 Negative Reviews That Make The Subject Sound Awesome Thread

As an adept, P. Diddy–approved producer, Mario Winans has forged infectious hits for R&B sirens (Beyoncé) and rap thugs alike (he even gave Benzino a hit with 2003’s “Rock the Party”). His dour singing debut, however, finds him generally avoiding club-friendly frivolities for ruminations on romantic misery. As the unbearable “What’s Wrong With Me” proves (Winans repeatedly whines “I miss you like a nigga should”), his fragile tenor isn’t nearly expressive enough to carry all these sullen songs. Such ill-advised forays into pop-rock as “3 Days Ago” don’t help.

(from Chairman Mao's review of Hurt No More in Blender)

I will never even think anything mean about Christgau again!

In 2004 this sounds like utter genius and I'd gladly pay a ludicrous sum on ebay for it.

What does a defiantly anti-corporate rock band do when it starts getting too much attention? In Pavement's case, they recoil. After a few ambitiously experimental though eminently tuneful releases – two singles and a 10-inch – for the tiny Drag City label, Pavement produced something of a masterpiece with their Velvet Underground-inspired first album, Slanted and Enchanted (1992). The Stockton, Calif., combo confirmed its buzz-band status on last year's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, this time stretching out a bit, with nods to the Flying Burrito Brothers and an "alternative" hit in "Cut Your Hair." Wowee Zowee finds the group returning to its more doggedly experimental impulses – with disappointing results.

Wowee betrays Pavement's best and worst tendencies. The band's refusal to play up to expectations keeps the stronger melodic ideas sounding fresh but leaves the album as a whole feeling scattered and sloppy. Having earlier proved that they can construct solid riffs, hooks and melodies, bandleaders Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg have here turned in a handful of half-baked performances.

Beginning with the stylistically vague "We Dance" – a song that either mocks early British art folk or shamelessly imitates it (I doubt even Pavement know for sure) – the album jerks mindlessly back and forth from odd, mellow song fragments to noisy, messy barnburners. Good, complete songs – including "Rattled by the Rush," "Grounded" and the Nirvana-like "Kennel District" – become diluted in the soup of tossed-off throwaways: "Brinks Job," with its whiny-falsetto vocals and a gratuitously noisy conclusion; "Serpentine Pad," a fleeting slambang tune that comes off like a second-rate Sonic Youth attempting hardcore, and "Best Friends Arm," which sounds like an unfinished rehearsal.

The most irksome thing about Wowee is that even the worst songs contain elements that reaffirm Pavement's underground star status: artful use of distortion and feedback, tangled guitar interplay with sizzle and groove, delicious melodies. And wonderful new additions to Pavement's instrumental palette, such as the milky pedal steel in "Father to a Sister of the Thought," get lost in the clutter of empty experimentation.

Maybe this album is a radical message to the corporate-rock ogre – or maybe Pavement are simply afraid to succeed. (RS 706)

"As such, the band's academic runs through 1970s glam ("The Eternal Lie"), synthesizer-heavy new wave ("Desert Lights") and Arthur Baker's bag of tricks ("I.C.U.") play as lifeless extensions of a cynical self-promotion cycle. Grotesquely orchestrated to entice critics looking for an excuse to wax informed, The Incomplete Triangle is-- whether the band will admit it, or even know it-- a scam. Lansing-Dreiden don't care about music but for what it can do for them, and they approach it with the sole aim of being well-regarded, touching every base from Nuggets to No New York to New Order"

Er, never mind — The New Rolling Stone Album Guide ("by Nathan Brackett" on Amazon) is apparently coming out in November. I'm addicted to these sorts of books so I'll probably buy it....

what's worse is that they aren't even original. they ripped off world party who were a yuppie-flu versin of the beatles...!
-- doomie x (xx...), September 4th, 2004.

he's talking about the New Radicals, whom the post doesn't make seem awesome, but it makes a great case for World Party!

Went straight out and got a copy.

-John F. Watson, Methodist Error, 1819

(1)"Touch but one string, 'twill make heaven ring," is of this character. What string is that which can effect this! Who can give any sense to it? Take another case: "Go shouting all your days," in connexion with "glory, glory, glory," in which go shouting is repeated six times in succession. Is there one particle of sense in its connexion with the general matter of the hymn? and are they not mere idle expletives, filled in to eke out the tunes? They are just exactly parallel to "go screaming, jumping, (or any other participle) all your days! O splendour, splendour." Do those who are delighted with such things, consider what delights them? Some times too, they are from such impure sources, as I am actually ashamed to name in this place.

(2) It is worthy of remark, that not one of our appointed hymns under the article "rejoicing and praise," nor among the "new hymns," have any hymns of this character, therefore they who want them most, have to forsake that standard.

demo review from Metal Forces #3: "All I can say is this band are sure suckers for punishment...Four of tracks, "Reaper," "Triumph of Death," "Crucifixion," and the classicly bad "Maniac" have all been regurgatated from the previous effort and are far superior which is disappointing as they are not half as amusing as the originals. Of the newer material the highlight has to be the catchy titled "The Third of the Storms (Evoked Damnation)" which sounds like Metallica's "Whiplash" being played by a bunch of three-year olds...distinctive style of totally out of tune heavy riffing with not a lead solo in sight..."

Fast forward 20 years, and "Third of the Storms" appears on Fenriz Presents: the Best of Old School Black Metal. Sepultura and Napalm Death have covered the band's songs, and the singer appears on the Probot album. There are at least three Hellhammer cover bands, and another act, Satanic Slaughter, named after the lead singer. Joe Preston's solo Melvins album cops language from Hellhammer. The reputation certainly made them sound awesome...

In the full circle dept., there's some mockery of that blue Dave Marsh book in my metal history book (one star for every single Priest and Sabbath album?); in return, Rolling Stone gave me a two-star review (not enough Limp Bizkit & reviewer didn't believe there had been black folk in Metallica or Priest, tho it's true.); needless to say, I got emails immediately from Bizkit readers who bought the book on that anti- recommendation.

Beginning with the stylistically vague "We Dance"...

stylistically vague? that may be the weirdest criticism i've ever read. how dare they not make it clear what genre their song is!

what is the blue Dave Marsh book? A book of his reviews?

Black Sabbath - (First 11 albums) * each
"These would-be Kings of English Heavy Metal are eternally foiled by their stupidity and intractibility."

Blackmore's Rainbow - Rising *
"Disgraceful slothfulness and thorough lack of imagination"

X - Los Angeles **
"directionless and abrasively unemotional"

Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen - Live in Texas ****

Fern Kinney - Groove Me ***

Steve Winwood - Arc of a Diver *****
"stunning conceptual unity"

Randy Newman - Sail Away *****
"Newman's triumph."

You get the picture -- it's a gas, a stunning portrait of record reviewer conceits circa 1980, in which the taste and discerning ear of Trouser Press is taken to task at least once.

Because it was the only rock book in many high school and public libraries during the 1980s, it was uniquely oppressive. Yeah, all of a sudden "abrasively unemotional" sounds awesome.

"Hmm. Interesting. The opening track, 'The Eye,' consists of some vaguely spooky noises over which British foreign secretary Robin 'Shagger' Cook rambles on about the historic opening of the Gaza Strip border. Oh, hang on. I've left the radio on. That's better. So, just some vaguely spooky noises, then. How interesting. No, really. How FUCKING interesting.

"Moving rapidly along, 'Square Rave' doesn't so much 'bang' as sort of rattle around like an insecticide-overdosed late-summer wasp trapped in a large paper lampshade. Far out! 'Dedicated Loop' is the sort of sucky ambient soundtrack that sucky film students choose for their sucky time-lapse Warhol pastiches. Hilarious! 'Tomorrow World' is Enya gone drum'n'bass. Groovy! 'Cool Veil' is ten seconds of aimless muso-masturbation. How witty! 'Schizm Track #1' is like 'The Rockafeller Skank' heard from the bottom of a 200ft-deep shit-filled pit. Great! Oh sweet Jesus! Do we have to go on!?

"Look, synthesisers, sequencers, samplers and drum machines are fab, gear and groovy. Hey, the Prodge, Atari Teenage Riot and Fatboy Slim swear by them! But what if this new tecknologie were ever to fall into the wrong hands? What if it were used to produce evil music? Like, music with no balls, soul, energy, aggression, passion, tune, danceable beats or apparent function? You know, the sort of pointless, irritating, self-indulgent, avant-garde-a-fucking-clue bollocks that a certain sort of especially annoying student pretends to be 'into' in order to look 'cool' shortly before he (and it's nearly always a he) gets a job in vivisection, Conservative politics or the music press? What, in other words, if these wonderful, shiny, new instruments were used to make art-wank jazzzzzzzzzzzz?

"Oh, wait! This is a pisstake, right? I'll bet this 'Tom Jenkinson' doesn't exist at all, does he? I bet it's those wacky blokes from The Fast Show who've slung all the ropy cack they recorded for their hilarious Jazz Club sketches onto a CD! Ha! You wags! You really had me going there! For a minute. I will kill anybody who plays any track off this CD in any building where I am present. You have been warned."

So, of course after I read that I immediately downloaded it. Sadly, it sucks!!

"Once upon a time Mark Hollis was the intense-eyed ranting lad who shouted 'All you do is talk talk!' Then he became the anthemically melancholy lad who moaned 'Its my life!' and never looked back from a life of anthemic melancholy.

"As time goes by, Mark Hollis' music has slipped into a vat of dark, brooding melancholy so deep that even David Sylvian would join Right Said Fred rather than partake of its glummo brew.

"In despair did EMI release an anthemically melancholy singles album and in more despair an anthemically melancholy dance remix album - an act on a par with releasing an Ambient House mix of Sham 69's 'Hurry Up Harry,' only not as interesting.

"Now Hollis has gone to Verve and recorded 'Laughing Stock' with 23 acoustically-oriented bass and organ and drum people. There is a slight jazz feel to this record. There are elements of soundtrack ambience. There are songs called 'After The Flood.' There are lyrics like 'A hunger uncurbed by nature's calling.' The whole thing is unutterably pretentious and looks over its shoulder hoping that someone will remark on its 'moody brilliance' or some such. It's horrible."