Music Update 1

AFI - Sing the Sorrow


AFI has been around for a while. I haven't heard anything they made before this album, but apparently it was different enough to alienate a lot of fans. In any case, I like it. They make quite capable pop punk with catchy choruses, a high voiced vocalist, and pretty normal guitars. It's not exceptional, but it's solid. Why I really like them is the bombast. Just the tone of the album is a little mightier and significant-seeming than most other stuff in the genre, starting with the opening song's war-cry esque vocals. They do a good combination of the singer's lone voice and several people shouting in unison, and it has the same feel as a general leading his troops into battle.

It could have been front loaded, with all of the singles in the first half, but it maintains quality throughout. The songs do kind of blend together as it goes on, but it's catchy enough that it's hard to care too much. It ends strongly, with the second to last track (which is oddly the first part of the two-part song that ends on the second track), which is a nice softer song, before the epic finale "...But Home Is Nowhere". It has one of the better anthems in it, than after it ends, there's a short silence before a sequence of voices progressing in age tell a creepy story backed up by a minimal piano tune. It then finishes with a stripped-down, well performed capper of a hidden track. Sing the Sorrow is a pretty good punk album helped out by elements that go deeper than the music.

Deftones - White Pony


Of all the bands stuck with the reviled nu-metal label, Deftones was one of the first, and it didn't do them any favors. They aren't like some of the other bands known for it, who inserted mediocre rap vocals and highly computerized and studio-perfected sound. They do have a bit of rap on the opening bonus track, although it's not obstructive and is pretty cool because the chorus is recalled in a different way on the album's final song. The hard rock music is decent, but the reason I really like Deftones is the vocals. The guy can sing, and his high voice contrasts in a very nice way with the crunching guitars.

He can scream as well as sing, and this is used along with the music to great some very nice shifts between hard and soft in the same song. Just listen to "Back to School (Mini Maggit)", "Elite", "Teenager", and "Passenger" to get an idea of how many things they can do and still sound like the same hardcore band. The single "Change (In the House of Flies)" interested me when I first heard it years ago, although I never got around to really listening to them until now, and I'm not sure why. Every song is enjoyable, and they manage to avoid all sounding the same which happens to a lot of bands with a similar style. It's not astounding but it's good hard rock.

Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News


I am becoming more and more of a fan of this kind of off-beat, different music. I guess I can't help myself. I liked the single "Float On" when I heard it a few years ago, but again, I didn't pursue the album until later. Good News is interesting because of its contrasting moods. The plucky guitars and catchy harmonies conflict with the cynical lyrics that attack religion and certain kinds of people. The vocals range from pleasant sounds in the background to aggressive, near shouting tirades. The singer isn't all that great at singing, but he's great at using his voice to convey any mood he wants.

"The World At Large" starts off the album about as happy as it gets, with flutes and meaningless vocals in the background. "Bury Me With It" is about as angry as the band gets musically, though not lyrically. That would be "Bukowski", which is completely pleasant musically. "The View" sounds like kind of like dance music. "Satin In a Coffin" uses prominent drums and older sounding instruments to create a very interesting sound. "The Good Times Are Killing Me" finishes off the album while perfectly illustrating the conflict of sound and message, and it's produced by The Flaming Lips, which is cool. Modest Mouse is a unique band, and a good one at that.

Nirvana - Nevermind


I like Nirvana, and I understand the influence they had on mainstream music, but I can't say I love their stuff as much as others do. Nevermind is a good album, but it's front loaded, and just doesn't have that something that makes it great. You can totally see all the ways their sound is replicated by other bands, but I don't find any of them to be terribly interesting either. Cobain's raspy vocals fit with his dark-natured guitar playing and lyrics, and he's a talented musician. But I think he's put on too high of a pedestal just because of how his career ended.

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" is considered by many to be the best song of the decade, and one of the best ever. It's good, to be sure. It might just be hard for me to put it in context, having heard it for a long time without really knowing much about music when it was first popular (I had just turned four when the album was released). It's followed by four more good grunge songs I've heard before, and then six that I haven't. None of it's bad, it's just a little boring after the first half. The last track has the earliest instance I know of a hidden song after several minutes of silence. It goes with the whole album, respectable, high quality stuff, not quite what I'd call amazing.

Opeth - Damnation


Opeth is a metal band, but Damnation is not a metal album. It is the second half of a broken up double album, and is almost purely progressive rock. Deliverance, which was released about six months earlier, is supposed to be one of their hardest records, and this is quite a counterbalance to that. Opeth is known for switching between hard and soft moments, and that's part of why I liked Ghost Reveries, but without that, they are free to just let the softer stuff do what it wants, and it becomes a more enjoyable overall record. Despite his growling, he can definitely sing, and they don't seem out of place doing music like this.

"Windowpane" proves you can be good at regular guitar playing and fast-paced metal shredding. The more downplayed musicianship is combined with creepy sounding ambiance and strong vocals, and this combination is heard throughout. My favorite part is the end of "Closure" which combines different kind of music to create an awesome sounding groove that could last forever if it wanted to. The whole thing is a bit brief compared to their other stuff, which makes some sense considering it was once just half of an album. It's quite entertaining while it lasts, and shows how much range a band can have.

Papa Roach - The Paramour Sessions


I got all of these albums through BMG. They have pretty good deals, if you don't mind buying the sometimes unwanted stuff they offer you. I'm not a big Papa Roach fan, but I was willing to get their latest album if it meant 5 that I actually wanted for only the cost of shipping.

I don't think Papa Roach is that good, but they're really not bad either. I've never been that critical of rock as long as it's entertaining to listen to and has some catchy hooks, which Paramour Sessions does. The band has long since steered away from rap and is now pretty standard hard rock. Nothing they do is really extraordinary, but they're quite capable of radio-friendly noise.

The single "...To Be Loved" is a pretty solid fast-paced jam. "The World Around You" has a nice guitar line in the verse and a hard chorus. "Forever" is one of the band's better slower songs, and is matched with an anthemic refrain. "Time Is Running Out" kind of sounds like a pop punk song, and is fun to listen to. "My Heart Is a Fist" is one of the more hardcore songs on the album, and "Roses On My Grave" is a departure with a string section, and is a nice way to end it.

Best Albums of 2006

2006 was a pretty good year for music, in my opinion. I managed to listen to a decent amount of new stuff and got into some good older stuff. The bad thing about music is that there's too much stuff from the past I need to hear, but they keeping coming out with new stuff too fast as well. Muse and Incubus both had pretty good new albums in Black Holes and Revelations and Light Grenades, and I got introduced to Sonic Youth with Rather Ripped, which definitely has me interesting in checking out their older stuff.

Best of 2006

6. Cursive - Happy Hollow


Happy Hollow doesn't come close to replicating the absolute brilliance of their previous release, The Ugly Organ, but it really isn't too fair to compare anything to one of my favorite albums ever. In between records, Cursive lost a cellist and added horns to their sound, and while they still sound distinctive, it just isn't as darkly interesting. They can still do good songs they're just missing an edge musically.

Not that that edge isn't as present as ever in the lyrics. The entire album is a brutal condemnation of the hypocrisies and evils of modern Christianity, and sometimes it sounds like Tim Kasher is being controversial for its own sake. He makes good points though, and this is overall pretty good indie rock.

5. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium


A bit of a letdown, to be honest. The Chili Peppers pumped out two great albums in a row with Californication and By the Way, and we've been anticipating something new for four years, and then we learn it's a double album, and it ends up being a good two hours of music, but it's lacking that something that makes it great. It's possible it's just a fault with the multi-album format, it's harder to maintain a high level of quality for something that lasts that long. There are plenty of great songs to be found, but because of the sheer number, a lot of them blend together into solid, but unremarkable funky-pop-rock-whatever. None of it's bad, it's just stretched a little thin. Flea can still play bass like no one's business, and John Frusciante continues to hone his craft as one of the best guitarists in the world, and Anthony Keidis can actually sing these days. What they need to do next is go back to focusing on a smaller, more focused project. Not that they have to, with the mountains of money they must be swimming in.

4. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere


Cee-lo, who I don't know much about, and Danger Mouse, who did the intriguing Grey Album, combine to form a band that isn't really hip-hop, but takes a lot of its best elements, adds in a distinctive, good voice and great, um... producing, and ends up making one of the best songs ever. No, really, "Crazy" is up there. It's just a good song. It's not the only one either, as every single track is at least catchy, and most are unique, well constructed, and truly interesting. I can see why it wouldn't be for everyone, but I enjoy the hell out of it.

I'll take the time now to explain how all the hip-hop-type stuff I listen too is weirdly related. Gnarls Barkley is comprised of Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse. Dangerdoom is comprised of Danger Mouse and MF Doom, and their album features Cee-Lo and Ghostface Killah. Demon Days by Gorillaz was produced by Danger Mouse and features MF Doom. I've been thinking about listening to some more rap lately and the first album to get that comes to find is the acclaimed Fishscale - by Ghostface Killah. Whatever.

3. ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - So Divided


Trail of Dead fell out of the cushy position they had as a critical darling with Worlds Apart, which I thought was completely great (and introduced me to the band), and I couldn't really figure out why. I can see why someone would prefer Source Tags and Codes, but to say it's great and Worlds is bad... I just don't understand it. They're the same band. A little different, with less focus on songwriting and more on loudness and a bit of oddness, but still the same. So Divided was received a little better, though they still are far from where they were publically in 2002. I just hear a really good rock album, but I guess that's just me.

2. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain


This and Gnarls Barkley show me that I'm becoming more and more of a sucker for bands that aren't what I usually actually listen to. I'm nowhere near knowledgeable enough to describe what this band is like and why it's good, all I can tell you is that I just love listening to it. The mix of vocals is unique and interesting, the style totally works, and they're not half bad at just playing some rock. I really should be able to explain it better, but you should just listen if you don't. Also, make you sure you check out "Dry Drunk Emperor", which you should be able to find online for free. Not only is it a good song, it's a great condemnation of the presidency of George W. Bush (he's horrible).

1. Brand New - The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me


Some feared their follow-up to Deja Entendu might be too accoustic. They were wrong.

The Devil and God is hard as hell. Except for a couple tracks, every song is a balance between soft and hard, light and dark, good and evil, as the title implies. The heavy parts are made more powerful by the contrast with the downplayed strumming before it. It's not as lyrically clever as they were previously, but it's stronger musically, in my opinion. It's definitely cemented itself in the pantheon of my favorite albums, like, ever. It helps that I first listened to it under optimal conditions, in a car with a like-minded friend as the sun went down in late Autumn. Set the tone perfectly.

I don't think it's fair that Brand New still gets lumped with other emo bands it used to be closer to musically, like Taking Back Sunday. They were like that once, but that was long ago, they started shifting a few years ago, and now they've gone even further. I'm interested in seeing how they continue to develop and seperate themselves from other bands.

Delayed Entries

Audioslave - Audioslave

I'm not a huge fan of the band, but I really do think this is a great album. It's just completely full of good, hard rock songs. People say good things about Superunknown but I'd say this is the best thing anybody in this band's done that I've heard. I guess they've broken up now, though.

Clinic - Walking With Thee

Weird band, very distinctive vocals and different kind of sound that still sounds like rock, even when their aren't guitars. I'm not always in the mood for something like this, but it's a good change of pace.

Dream Theater - Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

Their long-awaited double album, the first disk is pretty normal long, well-crafted prog metal, and the second is an epic, forty minute song (broken into several tracks) that sounds sometimes as much like the score to a musical as an album. Not really much metal there at all, but I really don't know what "normal" Dream Theater sounded like at that point, as Trains of Thought, which I got before this is supposed to be easily their hardest work. It doesn't really matter, it sounds good.

Dredg - El Cielo

I got into Dredg with 2005's Catch Without Arms, but I think I really fell in love with them with this. It has a lot of what made Catch great like the wonderful vocals and nice melodies combined with harder segments, but El Cielo is really more creative, different, and just better, I think. Just a fun listen at all times.

Gorillaz - Gorillaz

I didn't listen to Gorillaz much besides the singles until Demon Days, and that might have skewed me a bit, as a lot of people seem to prefer this, and I don't. It's still definitely very good though. It's a little less varied in sound and vocals than their follow-up, but has plenty of great hooks and sounds spread through the whole thing, and is just fun to listen to.

Longwave - There's a Fire

It's kind of hard to describe Longwave, since sometimes they're jamming in a totally dark, indie way, and sometimes it's pure pop rock. You should just listen to them and see what you think, since not many people do. They have elements of a lot of bands like U2, Interpol... I don't know, I don't really listen to bands like this a lot.

Opeth - Ghost Reveries

Between Opeth and Dream Theater, I should be able to get my fill of progressive metal for the rest of time. The guy's voice is seriously amazing, one minute he's giving you perfect death growls, and the next he's singing in a truly pleasant, normal tone. Hard, pounding metal combines with great musicianship and softer moments.

Porcupine Tree - Deadwing

They're only progressive, not metal, but since the guy produced Opeth at some point, I guess that's hardcore enough. It wasn't as well received as In Absentia, so I better check that out, since I think this is really good on its own. Some of the songs take a while but I'm never bored, it's very well crafted and plenty catchy in spots. Pretty damn good background music.

Radiohead - Kid A

I guess that since I liked this, I'll like pretty much anything Radiohead does. It's not rock music anymore, but it's still very interesting to listen to, and as electronic as it is, it still manages to seem to have a soul. I prefer their sound before the turn of the century, but it's still good now.