Dragon Ball Z Uncensored

[Mike Dunn]

You should take a break from writing 50 status updates about cheeseburgers and devote 15-20 minutes to getting your goddamn Man Man review out of the way.

[MADali]

R.E.M. - Lifes Rich Pageant (1986)

There is nothing wrong with R.E.M.’s “Lifes Rich Pageant” but I can’t imagine there being a situation where I would think, “Hmm…I’d really go for some Lifes Rich Pageant” at the moment. The album’s biggest FUCK YOU ROCK moment is their decision not to use apostrophe on their album title.

Too rock and roll for pussy grammar.

Anyway, I wonder which decade it was that started to make it hard for me to make out song lyrics. I can understand what rock bands are singing about in the 60s and 70s, but I always thought hard to listen to vocals started in the 90s. Maybe in the 80s, they started to increase the music volume so you couldn’t make out the vocals very well, and in the 90s, they started to mumble while singing also, and in the 00s, everyone just started to say fuck vocals.

I like “These Days”, even though I could only really make out the line “We are young despite the years”. I also enjoy “Fall On Me” because it sounds like a mixture of the 60s and 80s. Also, I’d like to vote for “Hyena” if anyone is going to ask me to list my top three songs from the album.

3/5

[MADali]

Man Man - Rabbit Habits (2008)

If I actively listening to this album, I think I enjoy it. But once I tune out a bit, then the many different sounds on the album gets on my nerves.

I think what I mean is that listening to “Rabbit Habits” is TOO much work.

Obviously, that’s not exactly Man Man’s fault for me being a lazy listener, but

I think what complex prog rock bands of the 70s did for me was that they are perfectly listenable as background music, and once you start to zone back in, there is something new to discover. With “Rabbit Habits”, I felt tired listening to it. I don’t think I actually listened to it once from start to finish.

2/5

[MADali]

SPOILER ALERT. Feel free not to read this review yet if we want to do it all together.

Brand New - Déjà Entendu (2003)

I think it’s been a while where I listened to an album that actually rocks, so maybe that’s why I immensely enjoyed this album.

Having not listened to many contemporary rock, I decided to look at its genres while writing this review. Is this “post-hardcore”? Everything is post & nu nowadays, and given that this is 2003 (a million years ago in music), I wonder if this is now retro-post-hardcore or something. Not important.
Let’s move on to the songs.

Ignoring the absolutely shitty title, “Sic Transit Gloria... Glory Fades” is the best song out of the album. It’s just three minutes but I felt that there was enough going on that I would not have even minded if it was much longer. “The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows” also gets a thumbs up or a devil’s horn with my fingers if that makes me cooler. And since I'm doing the devil fingers, I'm also going to use my other hand for '"Guernica"

Everything else is also pretty good.

4/5

[MADali]

Also, MHH, what's that crap you mentioned about "dad rock"? What's wrong with DADS?!

I bet us dads get rock harder than you non-dads!

[Mike Dunn]

Madali, you da real MVP.

And would it shock you to learn that many consider Deja Entendu's genre to be, *gasp*, emo?

[My Head Hurts 90]

Ugh, my review got wiped out twice while composing it in this god damn box, so I'm going to do a briefer one.

Brand New - Deja Etendu

This album is very characteristic of the type of rock made at the early 21st century, where Limp Bizkit proved that all you needed was a cynical worldview articulated in the bluntest way possible. Genres and aesthetics (nu metal, rap rock, emo) that made it easier to say shittier and angrier things were popularized (god, NOFX). Even some of the better acts of the era (Elliot Smith, Bright Eyes) are tough to listen to now as an adult because I refuse to believe a human being can be born with such an insufferably miserable voice. The singers are really concerned with showing us their feelings! I can't think of any other time in history where the music being made for teenagers literally could only be enjoyed by teenagers. This shit is just so embarrassing.

And really, that's the problem with emo. The appeal of it is supposedly sincerity/rawness/etc.., but it operates with such a limited emotional and musical palette that it makes that goal pretty much impossible. The results of this are what you expect when you can only interpret the world in black and white: numerous soft verse/loud chorus contrasts, visceral lyrics dealing in breaks and cuts, drums keeping their steady, anthemy rhythms. You have heard all of this before (im so clever).

It's not all a wash. I predictably like the acoustic songs, and the multi-voiced ending of "Crack the Sky" shows some beautiful songwriting and singing. The first minute of "Jaws Swimming Theme" is ok before it goes back into punky mode. To be clear, none of the songs are terrible, but this album doesn't do much to distinguish itself from its contemporaries.


Recommend? No

Top Tracks

Crack the Sky
Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot

[Ryoko's Biatch]

Rabbit Habits - Man Man

It started out pretty well with the first song. I liked the punk sound and I expected good things. Then the next song started and it all went downhill. Hurly/Burly is so bad, holy shit. The rest never gets past listenable. It's like they purposely picked the best song to start out so you're tricked into listening to the whole album hoping for something that will never happen. Total dick move, Man Man. If it actually was a punk album, I could have even accepted your bad singing because no one would expect better.

1.75/5

Also, I'm going to revise my R.E.M. review. I was overly critical because I didn't want to review it, I was never an R.E.M. fan back in the day and the re-listen didn't really do much to change my mind. It's actually not THAT bad, I'm sorry, ALDP.

2.5/5

[ALDP]

Rabbit Habits
Man Man
2008

Length: 47:26

I can honestly say that the first time I listened to Rabbit Habits, I was blown away and I had no idea what was coming next for the entire album. Subsequent listens confirmed what impressed and surprised me so much that first listen. Without knowing anything about Man Man's actual album-making process, it's obvious that one or more people with real vision composed and arranged the dense, weird songs that make up the majority of the album. I think I read that Roy Orbison could just hear his full songs in his head before they recorded them or anything, and I bet it's the same deal with Man Man. Well there are parts that could be incorporating improvisation, so it's probably more like Frank Zappa conceiving and realizing his musical ideas.

Frank Zappa is another musician I never feel any desire whatsoever to listen to. Man Man manages to imagine a vast and original sonic palette that ranges between totally uninteresting, just annoying, and absolutely infuriating. These sounds are then meticulously applied with an expert hand and the result is a collection of unnerving herky jerky art rock that bores the shit out of me and makes me think about continuing to never listen to Tom Waits. I don't know if the lyrics are any good because every song includes a tuneless group chant and multiple sections that are just two bars of lyrics repeated incessantly and my ears are just dead when Budnick from Salute Your Shorts starts in again enthusiastically shouting the lyrics proper. Doo Right is the song I have to call out by name for making me angry enough to kill.

I'm honestly not sure about the "applied with an expert hand part" either. Whenever there's a piano or a guitar or something, it sounds like the person is at least 6 lessons away from switching to the intermediate book, but for some reason there is a year before the next lesson and the pianist from Man Man is honor-bound to practice nothing further than his current level in Mel Bay Beginning Easy Piano. They sound really good at the dumb baby riffs they play which are more often than not just simple repeating figures that go on forever and interest me as much as hearing one of the songwriters from Man Man talk in an interview about how their real influences in this period were stuff like barbershop quartets, Romanian folk tunes, and field hollers, which is the kind of assholes the band comes off as to me.

There's a xylophone and some horns and who gives a shit? It's almost impossible for me to imagine somebody liking this and not being an asshole.

TWO out of THREE STARS.

[My Head Hurts 90]

[Mike Dunn]

[hst]

Man Man - Rabbit Habits

I'd never heard of Man Man, so I them up on Wikipedia before I listened to this album. They play a lot of instruments, have stage names, and probably describe themselves as 'experimental'. All strong omens of a band being complete shit.

I had to listen to this record in 3 or 4 minute stretches over the better part of a week, because doing almost anything else was preferable. I can probably thank this album for a pretty decent run of productivity at the office.

To Man Man's credit, there are infuriatingly brief intervals of this record that are not completely insufferable. Those moments, though, are quickly ruined by Man Man's gratuitous multi-instrumentalism, dumb production, and other stupid band tricks. They sound like shitty Doors crossed with shitty Gogol Bordello, probably crossed with a lot of other shitty bands I haven't heard of or listened to. The fact that there's anything promising about this band is possibly even more infuriating than if they just sucked on a completely absolute basis.

1/3

[MADali]

who is this hst faggot?

[ALDP]

HunterThompson72

[MADali]

Did he fuck Gimp Mask's girlfriend? I remember he fucked someone's girlfriend. Did he fuck Megan?

[ALDP]

Well, there was a period of time when he couldn't have an orgasm unless he was watching a black guy named Brett plow his wife (Megan).

[hst]

[kakarot52]

Hey Hunter. If you remember me; I am Kakarot52. I was the funny one.


Anyway, he fucked Andre's crush (Morgan). Morgan said she no longer wants to fuck a man who is in to fashion.
_________________
To continue is power -Shitbeast

[kakarot52]

I Almost forgot:

Hoho! Grand!
_________________
To continue is power -Shitbeast

[My Head Hurts 90]

Lana Del Rey - Born to Die

I don't have much exposure to Lana Del Rey outside of "Young and Beautiful", but I remember liking her smokey voice enough to ignore how terrible the lyrics were and that sentiment pretty much holds true for this whole album.

Really, it's a miracle that she can pull this off when she's singing 3rd grade shit like "Every time I close my eyes/It's like a dark paradise". But in the end it doesn't matter, because Rey's syrupy crooning is such a natural fit with her subject matter: sad songs about materialism, break-ups, loneliness. Just about every pop song includes some throwaway line about love and eternity or death and loss, but Rey might be the only singer that can deliver such hyperbole and sound like she means it.

However, having a voice with such a defined, languid character also puts some pretty severe limitations on what you can do. Rey can't really muster up enough enthusiasm to make rapping or even slightly up-tempoish club songs work (National Anthem) and she can sound surprisingly plain when she gets into the higher registers. For the most part though, the album stays in its lane and experimentation comes in very small, semi-successful tweaks. "Off to the Races" is my favorite of these attempts as it lets the percussion and lush string arrangements help mask some of Rey's aforementioned weaknesses.

Rey and her producers know what she's good at and don't try to challenge that too much. Born to Die won't blow your mind, and yes, if you pay attention to the lyrics you will want to stab yourself in the dick, but it is a solid pop album preformed by someone with a decent amount of talent. Make of that what you will, but I enjoyed it.

Recommend?

It can't really hurt not to, so ok.


Tier List

Off to the Races, Video Games
Born to Die
Diet Mountain Dew, Carmen, Summertime Sadness, Million Dollar Man
This is What Makes Us Girls, Blue Jeans, Radio
National Anthem, Dark Paradise