SGTC: Mach II, Round 10

[murlough23]

OK, starting the next round... just this one, one more theme round (Dead Artists is round 11, so for those of you who chose a dead artist this time, I hope you've got another dead artist in mind for later), and then a final round, and we're done! Here's what we're rating this time:

bdg: The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan (Clips)
bloop: Wilco, Kicking Television (Clips)
Brenden: All American Rejects, Move Along (Clips)
Danny: R.E.M., Out of Time (Clips)
Josh: Lucinda Williams, Live at the Fillmore (Clips)
murlough: Rebecca St. James, If I Had One Chance to Tell You Something (Clips)
NinjaRob: Furthermore, She and I (Clips)
plvarona: Ingram Hill, June's Picture Show (Clips)
Wildcat: The Beatles, Revolver (Clips)
worldofcm: The Rocket Summer, Hello, Good Friend (Clips)

[murlough23]

bdg: 4 stars
bloop: 4 stars
Brenden: 3 stars
Danny: 4 stars
Josh: 4 stars
NinjaRob: 4 stars
plvarona: 3 stars
Wildcat: 4 stars
worldofcm: 4 stars

[Escuchame]

bloop: 5 stars

lol.

I don't play this game, but that was funny, almost knee-jerk.

[bloop]

5 is . . . a lot, but I don't want to lead or mislead one way or the other.

(I don't see how it's particularly funny, though, given that there are no comments made)

[bloop]

I'm just going to guess something this time and edit, just in case I forget like last time.

bdg: The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan (3 stars)
Brenden: All American Rejects, Move Along (2 stars)
Danny: R.E.M., Out of Time (3 stars)
Josh: Lucinda Williams, Live at the Fillmore (5 stars)
murlough: Rebecca St. James, If I Had One Chance to Tell You Something (3 stars)
NinjaRob: Furthermore, SheandI (4 stars)
plvarona: Ingram Hill, June's Picture Show (4 stars)
Wildcat: The Beatles, Revolver (4 stars)
worldofcm: The Rocket Summer, Hello, Good Friend (3 stars)
 

[murlough23]

5 is . . . a lot, but I don't want to lead or mislead one way or the other.

Maybe I just did that to mislead.

Or maybe I'm misleading now...

[Wildcatblue7]

bdg: 3
bloop: 4
Brenden: 3
Danny: 3
Josh: 5
murlough: 2
NinjaRob: 3
plvarona: 3
worldofcm: 4

[Brenden]

bdg: 3
bloop: 5
Danny: 3
Josh: 5
murlough: 3
NinjaRob: 4
plvarona: 3
Wildcat: 4
worldofcm: 3
 

[worldofcm]

bdg: The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan - 4 stars
bloop: Wilco, Kicking Television - 5 stars
Brenden: All American Rejects, Move Along - 4 stars
Danny: R.E.M., Out of Time - 4 stars
Josh: Lucinda Williams, Live at the Fillmore - 4 stars
murlough: Rebecca St. James, If I Had One Chance to Tell You Something - 4 stars
NinjaRob: Furthermore, SheandI - 4 stars
plvarona: Ingram Hill, June's Picture Show - 4 stars
Wildcat: The Beatles, Revolver - 4 stars

This was a pretty hard round to pick...

[eatahouse]

bdg: 4
bloop: 2
Brenden: 4
Danny: 2
Josh: 4
murlough: 4
NinjaRob: 2
plvarona: 2
Wildcat: 3
worldofcm: 3

[NinjaRob17]

4 for all.

[bdg13disciple]

bloop: Wilco, Kicking Television (4)
Brenden: All American Rejects, Move Along (3)
Danny: R.E.M., Out of Time (3)
Josh: Lucinda Williams, Live at the Fillmore (4)
murlough: Rebecca St. James, If I Had One Chance to Tell You Something (3)
NinjaRob: Furthermore, SheandI (4)
plvarona: Ingram Hill, June's Picture Show (4)
Wildcat: The Beatles, Revolver (4)
worldofcm: The Rocket Summer, Hello, Good Friend (3)

peace... love... bdg...
 

[Josh]

bdg: 3
bloop: 4
Brenden: 4
Danny: 3
murlough: 4
NinjaRob: 4
plvarona: 4
Wildcat: 5
worldofcm: 3

[murlough23]

Man, I've been really lazy about this round. I forgot to mention that the voting is deadline is midnight on Wednesday, December 22. And I still need to add links for clips. I'll get to that soon.

NP: "Firefly", Over the Rhine

[Wildcatblue7]

Man, I've been really lazy about this round. I forgot to mention that the voting is deadline is midnight on Wednesday, December 22. And I still need to add links for clips. I'll get to that soon.

NP: "Firefly", Over the Rhine

Hey Mur, can we take next week off, or do you want to continue and I'll just send in my rating late?  I'll be out of town all next week and I suspect others will be too.

[murlough23]

Hey Mur, can we take next week off, or do you want to continue and I'll just send in my rating late?  I'll be out of town all next week and I suspect others will be too.

That sounds like a good idea, actually. When should we reconvene?

[Wildcatblue7]

That sounds like a good idea, actually. When should we reconvene?

early january . . . the wednesday after new years, maybe?  that gives everyone time to recover and get back into the swing of things.

[plvarona]

bdg: 4 stars
bloop: 4 stars
Brenden: 4 stars
Danny: 3 stars
Josh: 4 stars
murlough: 3 stars
NinjaRob: 4 stars
Wildcat: 4 stars
worldofcm: 3 stars

[murlough23]

early january . . . the wednesday after new years, maybe?  that gives everyone time to recover and get back into the swing of things.

2 weeks off sounds like a good plan. Then the game will run for 2 more weeks and be done in mid-January.

NP: "Spark (live)", Over the Rhine

[danny316]

bdg: The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan  - 4 stars
bloop: Wilco, Kicking Television - 4 stars
Brenden: All American Rejects, Move Along - 3 stars
Josh: Lucinda Williams, Live at the Fillmore - 4 stars
murlough: Rebecca St. James, If I Had One Chance to Tell You Something - 3 stars
NinjaRob: Furthermore, She and I - 3 stars
plvarona: Ingram Hill, June's Picture Show - 3 stars
Wildcat: The Beatles, Revolver - 4 stars
worldofcm: The Rocket Summer, Hello, Good Friend - 4 stars

When does this round end, btw?

To revisit last round, briefly:

No need to be humiliated. He did it only to get ahead in the game. A 1 star rating for a compilation album of classical songs? Even the worst of mixing and editing couldn't honestly give an album like this 1 star.

I picked the album knowing beforehand that it wasn't a good disc. However, I stand by my rating. I wouldn't give a greatest hits album a good grade just because it came from a reliable artist (or genre?). I was thinking that song selection, order, and mixing was more important for this kind of thing. In this case, the performances were important too because original recordings weren't available. I think 1 star is fair considering those elements of the album. Given a perfectly clear set of superb performances with no mixing errors and a similar tracklist, I'd probably settle on 3 or 4 stars....but for a "best-of" album, those things are the most important. To me, anyway.

Other "bad" best of's in my book include Queen's, which skips "Bohemian Rhapsody", and Sixpence None the Richer's, which also includes sub-par recordings of good songs (Trust, Within A Room Somewhere, Kiss Me (Japanese single)) and makes some bizarre song selections. Both bands aren't bad at all, but their best-ofs just aren't good.

[murlough23]

When does this round end, btw?

Sorry, didn't notice this question until now, but I've actually answered it earlier in the thread. The round ended last night, but since I was tardy in posting the deadline, I'll give folks who haven't guessed time to do so (if there are any). I was about to come here and post my rating for RSJ, but I'll hold off to make sure people have a fair chance.

I picked the album knowing beforehand that it wasn't a good disc. However, I stand by my rating. I wouldn't give a greatest hits album a good grade just because it came from a reliable artist (or genre?). I was thinking that song selection, order, and mixing was more important for this kind of thing. In this case, the performances were important too because original recordings weren't available. I think 1 star is fair considering those elements of the album. Given a perfectly clear set of superb performances with no mixing errors and a similar tracklist, I'd probably settle on 3 or 4 stars....but for a "best-of" album, those things are the most important. To me, anyway.

I understood your rating; it was just hard to tell from the clips that the sound quality and performances were that bad. I figured those would be reasons why you'd drop down from 5 to 4 stars, instead of dropping down from 4 to 1, but then, the whole point of this game is second-guessing someone else's logic in cases where it may not reflect our own.

Other "bad" best of's in my book include Queen's, which skips "Bohemian Rhapsody", and Sixpence None the Richer's, which also includes sub-par recordings of good songs (Trust, Within A Room Somewhere, Kiss Me (Japanese single)) and makes some bizarre song selections. Both bands aren't bad at all, but their best-ofs just aren't good.

I too am merciless about downgrading best-of records based on exclusion of worthy songs, even if what's included is really good stuff. I really struggled when I reviewed The Late, Great PfR way back when; I wanted to drop to 4 stars due to the exclusion of "Let Go", which more or less put PfR on the map, but since it was such a solid collection that included fan favorites alongside radio hits, I had to round up to 5 stars in the end.

Can't comment specifically on the Sixpence best-of since it will likely be my pick for the "Defunct Artists" round, but I do agree with you that I'm not a big fan of putting sub-par versions of songs on an album. However, if a "subpar" version happens to be the album version, I can understand the choice because they're likely going with the original recording of the song. Attempts to re-record songs for best-ofs are often ill-advised, because even if they improve on the song, it still isn't what everyone's used to and it kind of ruins the nostalgia. I can think of exceptions where a non-album version of a song has worked better (the live version of "Brian Wilson" on the Barenaked Ladies' best-of would be a good one), but for the most part, either give us the album tracks we know, or if you want to completely re-record everything and do a Furthermore, then that's fine; at least the presentation is consistent and we don't expect the originals for any song. (I know, I wasn't a big fan of Furthermore, but the idea behind that album was a good one.)

[murlough23]

OK, I just checked, and 11 people have guessed - that's all of the critics plus eatahouse, so we're good to go with ending the round.

I seem to have a penchant for choosing albums that fall almost exactly on the fence in terms of half-stars. RSJ's If I Had... is no exception. I had no problem assigning 5-star ratings (4.5 rounded up in each case) to the trifecta of God, Pray, and Transform, all of which were refreshing amidst the CCM climate of their day, even if the lyrics were never personal, I felt like I was getting a good glimpse into who RSJ was just due to the passion presented through the music and vocals. Nowadays, RSJ fits into the CCM climate so seamlessly that even though I can still see her music as being a little more thought out and high-energy than your average pop/rock vocalist, the magic is kind of gone when I listen to her. I still appreciate some quirks here and there, and I commend her for not just cutting another album entirely full of worship songs. She's penned a few thoughtful lyrics on this one. It's just that the album drags at times, with few standout tracks that I can really point to and go "Wow, this is a good song". The only song that I'd really say rises above good to being truly amazing is "Forgive Me", a haunting piano ballad performed with BarlowGirl (and here I was expecting a dumbed-down chick rock song about purity). Most of the rest of the tracks are pretty nice, but they don't stick with me. This would generally make for a four-star record in my book, but due to the inclusion of the Toby Mac collaboration "Thank You", which sucks donkey gonads, I'll have to round it down to 3 stars instead.

[Brenden]

Move Along is an ok album. Most of the songs have pretty predictable lyrics, and most are about the same thing (messed up because of a girl). The title track tries to be inspirational, but only succeeds in being catchy and fairly generic. Dirty Little Secret is probably the highlight of the album from a musical, lyrical, and vocal standpoint. Most of the rest is standard pop-punk. There are a few interesting musical parts throughout the album, but the lead singer decides to go with only his higer range for almost the entire album, making some tracks downright annoying, and most of the others just not making much of an impression. There's also the occasional well-written lyric.

I'll go with 3 stars for this one.

Next round I'll go with Fold Zandura - Ultraforever

[worldofcm]

I may or may not actually give a review.  Busy times.

My rating:  4 stars for The Rocket Summer.

[Josh]

Lucinda gets 3 from me. It's a nice enough live album, but there's nothing in the way of interpretation or reinvention, thus none of the live versions of these songs offers us anything that we can't get from the studio versions.  

[plvarona]

[Wildcatblue7]

Revolver gets four stars from me.  Predictable, eh?  I'm on my grandparent's connection and I really have little to say about it, so that's the extent of my review . . .

Yeah, I have no idea what I'm reviewing next.  We'll see what happens after Christmas.  I can think of some good 'uns, though.  Is next round the Dead Artists round?  For that, can we use bands that have some dead members, or need everyone be dead?  that sounds rather bad.  oh well.

[worldofcm]

To me - Josh has been the hardest to predict for this season.

Next round - The Benjamin Gate, Contact

[NinjaRob17]

4 Stars for "SheandI". I like it, but not enough to give it 5 stars. Yeah, I'm too tired to explain any further.

Next round, "Free Signal" by Beanbag.

[danny316]

When do we have to have our picks for next round in?

I'm giving REM 4 stars. It's a bit samey in some places, but these are all good songs that are realized quite well. The only thing you can really fault it on is sounding too much like an "album", in that annoying way Bono used the term last year. I'd elaborate, but I should get going.

[murlough23]

Picks for next round should be in by... let's say January 3rd. Anyone have issues with that?

Regarding "Dead or Defunct Artists", if someone in the band being dead means they're no longer active, then it's allowed. Even if not, I guess it's a different configuration of the band, so... use your own judgment.

[bdg13disciple]

sorry for the tardiness...

'tis the season to forget about just about everything...

earlier this year, Get Behind Me Satan would've gotten a 4-4.5 from me pretty easily, and while i still love the rawness and energy driving a lot of the tracks, it has since become somewhat repetitve to me... harder to get into...

so, it's fallen a bit to 3.5ish, which rounds up to a 4...

still solid, but perhaps in three more months it will be a little lower...

peace... love... bdg...

[murlough23]

Just waiting for bloop's rating, then I can score this round.

[danny316]

Hey, Brandon, how long have you had that Fold Zandura CD? I'd like to factor that into my guess if I can.

[Brenden]

Hey, Brandon, how long have you had that Fold Zandura CD? I'd like to factor that into my guess if I can.

I've had it for about a month.

[bdg13disciple]

how about Rich Mullins - Here In America for next round?  

peace... love... bdg...

[Wildcatblue7]

Next round for me . . . Mike and the Mechanics self-titled.

[Josh]

My dead-or-defunct pick is Little Feat's Dixie Chicken.

[murlough23]

Round 10 is now open for business.

NP: "Like Moths to Flame", Thrice