When you reach the apex of the blogosphere, record labels and PR firms from around the world want to be your friend. They’ll send you countless albums in the hopes that you will write positive reviews and help launch careers. If they really, really care, they’ll show up at your doorstep with a bindle of blow and a high-priced hooker and announce, “wanna hear this awesome new band’s CD?” I hate turning those guys away, but I’ve got a very important routine of blogging in my underwear and going to work for minimum wage, and I don’t need another drug problem right now. At the very least, if you are sent unsolicited materials to review, you’ll be too embarrassed to have your name affiliated with a soul-crushingly pedestrian band, and you’ll get $3 in store credit from the local second-hand record store when you sell the promo just to get it out of your study or home office or wherever it is you choose to blog.

This is the situation I find myself in more often than not. But today, dear readers, I’m going to take the opportunity to write several short paragraphs about some of the albums that have made their way into my mailbox this month. So, without further a-doody…

The Chap
Mega Breakfast
Available on Lo Recordings

I’m not a fan of the artwork. It looks like it’s going to contain shitty electronic music, like another putrid LCD Soundsystem record. The title, Mega Breakfast, recalls the glory days of terrible album titles, an oft-overlooked era most recently mined by CoCorosie with their, The Adventures Of Ghosthorse and Stillborn record. The Chaps’ opening track (I hesitate to call it a “song”) repeats the word “dance floor” ad nauseam before the vocalist utters something like, “heartthrob hits the dance floor.” This is about as enjoyable as uncontrollable diarrhea after a night of beer and taco truck food; an album replete with pulsating laptop rhythms and a British accent discussing my least favorite of all venues, the dance club. The second track is even worse. No discernible instruments, just computerized glitches, break-beats, and utter crap lyrics. Where are the pyrotechnics and the silly-shaped guitars squealing out razor-sharp solos? The Shane MacGowan puking and pissing in the same bucket? The dyed-blonde chicks licking their own tits and screaming for someone in the band to fuck them from the audience? Mega Breakfast is total gay bar camp. I don’t know who listens to this kind of music, but I certainly don’t envy them. It’s records like Mega Breakfast that force me to look around at the albums my fellow bloggers are reviewing and feel like a completely useless and disrespected piece of shit. [Listen to "They Have A Name"]

Mock Orange
Captain Love
Available on Wednesday Recordings

Totally excited about reviewing Captain Love. Totally unable to control my sarcasm anymore. It’s nice to see bands like The Decemberists have been around long enough to start influencing new bands. Mock Orange would have done better to name themselves “Mock Turtleneck”, because their sound is probably very popular with kids who dress like forced-anal-intrusion-in-waiting high school geeks. Bright acoustic guitars, marching band drums, a singer who sounds like the guy from Modest Mouse drunk on too much Mountain Dew and World of Warcraft. The problem with bands like The Arcade Fire is that they’ve confused bands into believing that adding quirky flourishes is cool and interesting, when in reality it usually tells me that the basic melodies of the songs aren’t any fucking good so the band conspires to draw our attention away from the complete blandness of the songs. [Listen to "Captain Love"]

And This Army
The Skin Of Teeth

And this is why we don’t start band names with the word “And”. It’s grammatically incorrect. Plus: And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. You see my point? Their hype sheet begins, “Brooklyns…” Wait a minute, I can’t get behind a band that so heavily touts the fact that they are from Brooklyn. I mean, who gives a shit? It’s fucking Brooklyn. Is it really worth making your band’s URL include the BKNY thing? How about just using your band name? There’s a lot of fucking garbage music from Brooklyn, why the shit do you want to affiliate yourself with it? +/-? Sucks. The Honorary Title? Sucks. My Brightest Diamond? Sucks. Asobi Seksu? Sucks. Clap Your Hands Say Suck? Sucks. Vietnam? You really want to laud yourselves for making music in the same town as all those douches? Go right ahead, it’s not making me like your band any more. The press release continues, “…gained notoriety in 2006 with their debut LP…which tempered bludgeoning atmospheric metal and dissonant noise with some seriously catchy, poppy songcraft.” What the fuck is a “songcraft” anyway? Is that a word? Or is that like saying “lifestyle” instead of “life”. I guess what that means is, they use a lot of fuzz pedals, but they’re not so far out there that they don’t know how to write a simple melody? Too bad. Why don’t you sound more like the Psychic Paramount. Now there’s a New York band I love, than I can really “get behind” (like a woman, to fuck).

Vanilla Swingers (More like “Vanilla Singers”! Get it? Because their voices do nothing for me, they’re just… vanilla?)
Vs.
Available on Radio Ballads Records

There comes a moment in every music journalist’s (HAHAHAHA) life when he feels like he’s hit bottom. Nothing sounds good to him anymore (they’re mostly males, without any strong interpersonal relationships), and he starts to question why on Earth he’s sitting in his bedroom in an overheated apartment listening to crap music, when he should be selling out and hyping all the already over-hyped acts just to score hot interviews, widen his audience, gain advertising revenue and feel like he’s a part of the cool blogging scene. Then he hears the first ten seconds of the first song of this Vanilla Swingers album he’s supposed to try and review — the one with a cover that looks like a freeze-frame from a taut psychological thriller starring Clive Owen and Jodie Foster — and he instantly stops the CD and reaches for his gun, ultimately choosing to blow his brains out rather than make it through the next two minutes and forty-three seconds. Is the second track better than the first? Is it even worth remaining alive to figure out? [Listen to "The Town"]

Grantura
In Dreams and Other Stories
Available on Ruffa Lane Records

Whoa alt-country. Someone likes The Byrds … or maybe Ryan Adams. This is definitely the most palatable of the CDs that have arrived in my mailbox recently. At least it’s not dance music or Christian Rock. Although Gram Parsons wrote a lot of Christian-themed songs, and he was in The Byrds. Wait, maybe I’m not listening close enough. Nope, it’s just good-timey old country music. Except apparently Grantura are from the UK. Well how the fuck does that happen? Shouldn’t British bands be influenced by, like, The Clash or The Killers, and not Hank Williams and Gram Parsons? They need more multi-part harmonies. Constant harmonies. The ones on “Land Of The Big Skies” are good. The rest…whatever. More twelve string, Roger McGuinn! I just picture a bunch of ugly dudes with bad teeth, closing their eyes while trying to hit the notes. Like, the ugliest teeth ever. Like a muppet cartoon with gnarly, twisted fucking hooked teeth that extend so far outward, even a closed mouth exposes bits of tooth. Fucking gross British people. [Listen to "Waves"]

If you or a loved one would like to see your band unfairly reviewed, please e-mail me your requests for free press.

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