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Good Morning - Barnyard

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Barnyard by Good Morning is much more my speed at the moment. Mid tempo indie rock with a dose of detuned mope folk. That said, if Coldplay meets Deerhunter isn't your idea of a good time, you'll definitely wish everything had already disappeared while listening to Wahlberg; it does indeed sound exactly like Futurism. Damn, I guess that means we have to try to figure out if that even means anything. Deerhunter came first, so what's that song about? Well, it depicts a bleak dystopian future in which we are caged, but content to decorate that cage. Furthermore, our significant others are encased in plastic, safely protected from the terrible outside world. This is a future founded on fear. Wahlberg however is a criticism of men insisting upon fathering more children well into their 60s and 70s. You know, breeders. I don't know, makes perfect intertextual sense to me, I assume you're supposed to think Good Morning did it on purpose, but then again I have no idea if Dee
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Of Montreal - Ur Fun

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I have 2 questions. First, is Of Montreal of Montreal? Second, which "ur" are we dealing with here?  If they're actually from Montreal then it's totally funny for the grammar needs like me, but if they're not from Montreal then it's not at all funny for a guy who hates post-ironic humor like me. That's a joke, I'm practically the poster child for post-ironic humor, and I'll mud-wrestle both Tim and Eric to prove it. More pressing, is the album title "You Are Fun," "Your [as opposed to my] Fun," "[the authoritative version of] Fun," or some menage-a-conglomorate of the 3? No confidence listening to it will answer either of those questions, but we came here to down the hatches, so down the hatch it goes. I can't lie, I've tried to review this album many times, but I have a completely unfair bias against it. First, they aren't from Canada, they're from REM/B52's land, Athens, GA. Second, Kevin Barnes h
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Pearl Jam - Dark Matter

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K, trash all the previous attempts at reviewing Dark Matter because I just simply don't know how to feel about a Pearl Jam album where Eddie Vedder pronounces all the words correctly.
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Saunder Juriaans - Beasts

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I know what Beasts are, but what the hell is a Saunder Juriaans? Ooooh, he's a "film composer," so this is probably some type of singer-songwriter side quest or something. Makes total sense, unless I'm wrong. Ooooh, the lead off track, All Just Talkin' is like some generic Hipster Folk with seriously Björk-y orchestration and avant-noisy seque/outro. I can definitely dig it. Smoky Cabaret piano and chamber orchestra for A Different Shade Of The Same.  Hipster hand-clapping like we accidentally stepped into a Wes Anderson movie for Easy Now. Then some psych-rock fooling around before the truly haunting All The Kings Men. Will they put Humpty together again? On to side B to find out. That's not a joke, by the way, it's an album about a fractured personality trying to put the pieces back together after a long period of depression. It was released in 2020 though, so i'm gonna have to misquote Lloyd Bridges and say "looks like I picked the wrong year t
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Dokken - Under Lock And Key

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Well then, this was the Mondayest Monday I've had in a looong time. I don't know that Dokken can help much, but they certainly can't hurt. Critics absolutely can't make up their minds about any Dokken album, but I don't think anyone is going to argue that Dokken as a whole doesn't completely rock. Under Lock And Key is their 3rd album, and although Glam Metal is not the go to genre for real, proper Albums the way I prefer them, this one certainly isn't bad. The first power ballad is track 4, Slipping Away, and that gets backhanded across the face by the proper Heavy Metal side closer Lightning Strikes Again.  Now, in general I'm not partial to blaming women for failed relationships, but i'm willing to give It's Not Love the benefit of the doubt when it's contrasted by Jaded Heart. Yes, it's clearly established that our protagonist is some kind of love werewolf who just escaped his underground prison, but all he's really saying is &quo
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Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way

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I don't know about you, but i love Pat Benatar. Yes, that's also her debut album with the single most underrated song in the universe (My Clone Sleeps Alone) in the background, but that's just a generic non-self-titled debut album. We're jumping ahead to her 6th album, Seven The Hard Way, because that, ladies and gentle germs, is how you kalaidescope a concept. Not one, not two, not three, but 4 protien-packed layers to this metaphor. You don't really need to know the overly complicated rules of Craps to know that A) it's gambling, B) "the hard way" refers to rolling doubles, so good luck rolling two 3.5s, and C) you're going to lose, one way or another. It's a joke, but more importantly, it's Pat Benatar and the roll out is Sex As A Weapon, so the innuendo is not intended to be subtle. Wait wait wait, that's only 3, Bottle, where's 4? You're right, last but not least, side B opens with Seven Rooms of Gloom, a Holland-Dozier-Hol
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Alice In Chains - Facelift

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What a bizarre feeling to hear an album you haven't heard in 30 years. Sure, the big hits from Facelift are fully in my brain out of context, but all the tracks are bathed in an impenetrable fog of pseudo deja vu. I go "oh yeah, i remember this little part," but i totally forgot how G'n'R on quaaludes with out of nowhere funk the album actually is. If that seems weird to you, you need to remember a few things. 1) Nevermind and the Use Your Illusions haven't come out yet, 2) early Alice In Chains wasn't trying to be different, they were trying to be Mainstream Hard Rock/Heavy Metal and there's more falsetto on Facelift than both Skid Row albums combined, and 3) Grunge is not a genre.  It sounds like early Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, and G'n'R, but it's practically New Orleans Sludge slow, and the guitar solos are decidedly more noise than melody. Sludge very much is a genre, it's a grungy offshoot of Black Sabbath style Doom, but t
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