Second Guess the Critic: SMACKDOWN! Round 8

[bloop]

This week, your reviewers get all arthouse and foreign.

bloop: Welcome to Mali, Amadou & Mariam
murlough: Middle Cyclone, Neko Case
plvarona: No Line on the Horizon, U2
Josh: Enemy Mine, Swan Lake
Brenden: Life In Cartoon Motion, Mika

Guesses due by Saturday.

[Josh]

Bloop: 5
Murlough: 3
Phil: 5
Brenden: 4

[Aaron]

Bloop - 5
Bren - 5
Phil - 4
Josh - 4
murlough - 3

[Brenden]

Bloop - 5
Phil - 4
Josh - 4
murlough - 3

[ajyouthguy]

Bloop - 4
Bren - 5
Phil - 5
Josh - 4
murlough - 4

[murlough23]

Guys, absolutely none of Amadou & Mariam, Swan Lake, or Mika have clips available at Amazon. I'm going to suggest that going forward, we stop doing albums that haven't been released yet unless the person reviewing the album can provide a link with clips of most or all of the tracks on the album.

In the meantime, if someone could provide me with URLs where I could get audio examples of this stuff, that'd be a big help.

[Josh]

MySpace is always a good bet; you can hear 3 of Swan Lake's songs-- which is a full third of the album-- for free!

http://www.myspace.com/swanlaketheband

[dgp11776]

Here is Mika:

http://www.amazon.com/Life-in-Cartoon-Motion/dp/B001O05X2U/ref=sr_f3_1?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1236968721&sr=103-1

Amadou & Mariam

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welcome-to-Mali/dp/B001KWMYI8/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk?ie=UTF8&qid=1236968822&sr=8-2

[murlough23]

Thanks, guys. Apparently my Amazon searching skills are rather poor.

[murlough23]

bloop: 5
plvarona: 4
Josh: 4
Brenden: 3

[bloop]

Oof!  4 for all?

[plvarona]

Sliding this in at the 11th hour...

bloop: 5
murlough: 3
Josh: 4
Brenden: 4

[bloop]

Ok, go.

[Josh]

Well, you ll had Swan Lake pegged-- or perhaps you just didn't know what to think, but at any rate, 4 stars is correct. It's a pop album with doses of classic and indie rock, and the songwriting is often very clever, sometimes overly so. It's good, if you're into this type of thing, but far from a masterpiece-- it is, rather, merely a very good indie pop record.

For the next round I want to do The Antlers - Hospice, which you can stream in its entirety at the Antlers' Web site.

[plvarona]

It looks like you guys were torn between 4 and 5 stars for me, and honestly, I was too.  It's time to see which way I went.

Album Reviewed: U2 - No Line on the Horizon

Pros: This was one of U2's more effective efforts in melding electronic elements into their sound, yet at the same time this still feels like a U2 album.  The first half of the album has its fair share of standout cuts, most notably "Magnificent", which is a candidate for my favorite song U2 has recorded this decade, and the slow-paced "Moment of Surrender", even if I felt that one may have been more appropriate later in the CD.  I have at least some sort of liking to every song on the CD.  Lyrically, there are quite a few thoughtful moments, even if they tend to be a bit cryptic, as usual.

Cons: There are a few tracks that are a little "meh" for me, including the first single "Get On Your Boots", and the closing track "Cedars of Lebanon."  On the latter, I'm not too fond of Bono's half-talking, half-singing approach, although I do like the thoughtful lyrics on that track.  Speaking about Bono, his voice sounds a little weak in a few spots, most notably on the title track.  While this album is filled with good songs, there aren't too many "wow" moments.

The Bottom Line: It's a cut below vintage U2, but I still think this is their strongest album this decade.  I find it to be their most enjoyable album since Zooropa.

Rating: "B+", which is a strong 4 stars.

On Deck For Next Week: Matthew Perryman Jones - Swallow the Sea  (Link to clips from amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Swallow-the-Sea/dp/B001E5BVAS/ref=sr_f3_1?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1237058613&sr=103-1.  He also has a few full song samples on his myspace page.)

[murlough23]

I'm disappointed that some of you thought I'd give Neko Case an average grade. I immediately fell in love with her voice and her style. She had me at "This Tornado Loves You". That's only one song out of 14, of course, and some of the 14 seem to be over before she really gets into whatever it is that she's trying to stay, so I have to knock off a few points here and there for a lack of standing out. But there are no bad songs ("Some People Got a Lotta Nerve" comes close with its catchy but dumb chorus of "I'm a man, man, man eater, and you're surprised, prised, prised when I eat ya"), and a few choice cuts are downright beautiful - most notably the intimate "Vengeance Is Sleeping" and the Over the Rhine-ish "Don't Forget Me". Middle Cyclone is a flawed but lovely album. 4 stars.

[Brenden]

5 stars? Really? I'm not THAT easy.

Mika is weird, in a sense. I find myself drawn to the fun music and most of the lyrics seem harmless enough that I don't really feel the need to think about them to enjoy the album. The upbeat songs are his strong point, catchy, memorable, and amusing. The downside is that when he slows down, he becomes pretty dull and his voice can't make up for everything. Also, Billy Brown is a godawful track.

All in all, it's not bad, but nothing I'd really recommend to anyone, so, I give it a C+, or, 3 Stars

[murlough23]

If we're back to free-for all for the next round, I'll do The Lonely Island's Incredibad.

http://www.amazon.com/Incredibad-Lonely-Island/dp/B001NY4WLA/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1237095453&sr=8-1

[Brenden]

I'll do The Fray - The Fray.

[bloop]

With the big annual event at school, I barely had time to listen to much music.  However, what I heard was wonderfully energetic, playful, and authentic.  Any flaws are rather inconsequential, so 5 stars for A&M.

btw, mur, I think a lot of people probably knocked off another star after that parting stunt that closes the album.  I thought that wouldn't really be fair, given that if you erase it, you still have a solid album's worth of material, and that you would recognize that.  Glad I guessed right.

Next round, Scream by Chris Cornell

[murlough23]

btw, mur, I think a lot of people probably knocked off another star after that parting stunt that closes the album.  I thought that wouldn't really be fair, given that if you erase it, you still have a solid album's worth of material, and that you would recognize that.  Glad I guessed right.

That's exactly what I did for the burned copy that I have in my car right now. When I buy the real thing, I will just eject the CD after track 14. It would annoy me greatly to have 30 minutes of that (or even 5) right smack in the middle of the CD, but at the end, I figure it's a hidden track, and I've heard far more annoying nonsense in hidden tracks. It's the kind of thing that, had I been on the fence between an A- and a B+, would tip me toward the B+, because to me A-grade albums should be enjoyable all the way through for everything that is on there. But it would be hypocritical of me to downgrade the album a full star for it (as I pointed out in the earlier discussion, Jars of Clay has about a half an hour of nonsense tacked onto the end of their first album).

I will say that I expected something mellower than "Red Tide" as a good lead-in to the long, mellow ending, though. I like "Red Tide", but it doesn't make sense at the end.

[bloop]

This Round:
10   murlough
8.75   bloop
8.75   Brendan
7.5   plvarona
7.4   Wanderer
6.4   ajyouthguy
6.25   Josh
0   Ninjarob

Overall
66.25  murlough
65   bloop
63  plvarona
59.8  ajyouthguy
59.25  Brendan
58  Josh
43  Ninjarob
31.4   Wanderer

[murlough23]

This Round:
10   murlough

Damn, that felt good. I'm so used to completely misconstruing you guys.