Monday Music Review On Tuesday

By london_ken Last edited 226 months ago
Monday Music Review On Tuesday

You'd have thought there was only one record in town the way the radio was so full of hype recently. But enough about Crazy Frog (we can think of a more appropriate word beginning with 'C' to apply to the Annoying Amphibian), this week we bring you four full reviews of albums released this week:

Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll

Oasis - Don't Believe The Truth

Sleater-Kinney - The Woods

Turin Brakes - JackInABox

Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll.jpg

Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll

So, in strictly alphabetical order, we begin with Art Brut's Bang Bang Rock & Roll. Kicking off with statement of intent Formed A Band this track alone contains more bollocks than the whole of the last five Oasis albums. Modern Art retains the edge along with supplying a bit of glam stomp rock while the NME-baiting Bad Weekend can be seen as another manifesto statement: "Popular culture no longer applies to me".

My Little Brother sails a little close to the Sultans of Ping FC wind with its refrain of "My little brother just discovered rock and roll", before ending with the sagely, Jarvis Cocker-esque advice: "Stay off the crack." Emily Kane's story of a lost love recalls Cocker even more as well as coming acroos Billy Bragg. The Jarvis Cocker/Pulp connection is even stronger in the track Once Is Enough (the lyrics of which supply the album title) in its tale of drugs, sex and rock and roll:

Met the sweetest girl, sold me a pill / Tasted like shit and made me feel ill / Watch my body twist and jerk / I just want to find a drug that works.

Fight is a bit too comedy for our liking, with the school playground chant of 'fight fight fight' forming the middle eight and a chorus of "Come on, come on, let's have a fight" sounding like it's trying too hard. (Londonist isn't looking for a fight, by the way, although we reckon we could take Art Brut on quite comfortably if they really want to take things ahhhtside, naaaah.)

Moving to LA takes the pace down a little and, if only for daring to be a bit different to the rest of the album, is the stand-out track for us. It manages the neat trick of sounding West Coast enough to befit the title yet injecting enough quirkiness (whistling and woo-ooh-ooh backing vocals) to be the most English of the tracks.

The spoken-singing style used on this album (think of an indie rock Rex-Harrison-doing-Henry-Higgins - although the band might prefer Mark E Smith as a comparison) might begin to grate after a few listens. It depends on whether you see the vocals as punk or incompetent. For our money we enjoy the vocals and they're delivered with enough guts to steer us from the Sultans of Ping FC comparisons and more towards Flowered Up.

There's nothing incredibly new about the sound Art Brut are producing - these things go in cycles, after all - but it's refreshing enough, and rock'n'roll enough, against the current background of hype surrounding a certain other supposedly rock'n'roll band to shine through. The delivery is lacking in cynicism (as opposed to the cutting lyrics) and is exuberant and fresh. There's plenty of energy in the record to give the impression that the band mean what they play and say. However, tough competition for them means they miss out on Album of the Week.

Stylus Magazine disagrees with us, making Bang Bang Rock & Roll their album of the week, erm, last week:

Art Brut’s triumphant debut still earns its status as one of 2005’s best releases. Bang Bang Rock and Roll is an album that tests the listener’s ability to discern what is more important—originality or execution.

Drowned in Sound fools us with one of those beginning paragraphs that looks like it's presaging a kicking for the band but actually answers its own criticism.

How many times, in the post-Strokes r‘n’r landscape we inhabit, have you heard a band say “Well, ha! We annoyed you and therefore we obviously caused a reaction!” What, and so you succeeded?! Don’t know about you, but I wanna be moved rather than annoyed by a lack of substance in my bands, and you can’t even tell such charlatans to fuck off ‘cos it’d just fuel their pithy, pointless reasons for making music.

is followed by

Art Brut aren’t that sort of band.

Acknowledging that Art Brut are a marmite band, DiS declares itself in the pro-Art Brut camp with a 9/10 review.

This isn’t irony, it’s barely rock n’ roll, it’s just life imitating art and art writing explosive, truly thrilling post-Britpop art-punk monologues about it.

More positivity emanates from The Times' review (4 stars) which, like Londonist, yearns for a watchable Top of the Pops:

The most refreshing aspect of Art Brut is their sheer joyfulness, often mistaken for irony. “We’re gonna write a song as universal as Happy Birthday/and play it on Top of the Pops for eight weeks in a row,” enthuses Argos. If only.

Caroline Sullivan over at The Guardian isn't so keen but manages to sit on the fence that DiS reckons doesn't exist, by awarding 3 stars.

These name-to-drop Londoners vehemently proclaim their uncoolness. But there's uncool (as in Pulp), and there's uncool - and Art Brut are the second kind.

She picks a fight with The Times by saying that Art Brut's frontman Eddie Argos

spends their entire debut album veering between irony and geekery - and no prizes for guessing which he favours.

We end this meta-review with the most positive review of them all, however. Playlouder proclaims this album "a work of genius" in awarding the full 5 marks.

It's the most original independent album in years, and the reason this year, which was beginning to feel anti-climactic, may well he remembered as a vintage. In short, 'Bang Bang Rock & Roll' is as clear as crystal a piece of untainted genius."

You can preview this album before committing your hard-earned cash by going to the XFM Listening Post.

Oasis - Don't Believe The Truth.jpg

Oasis - Don't Believe The Truth

Here's a Masterplan for you:

- Release debut effort which, despite (possibly because of) raw edges, attracts lots of acclaim and invites salivation at follow-up.

- Release second effort with bigger budget, more commercially-oriented, but which makes bundles of cash.

- Follow up with another formulaic effort which is forgiven because of the goodwill generated from the first two releases (despite the presence of patience-testing elements).

- Fail to quit while you're just about ahead. Release a load of crap which tramples all over the nostalgia generated by the debut attempt.

- Do it again, relying on the dumb loyalty of your audience to bring the moolah in.

- Then release another blockbuster which is hotly-anticipated, because people can't quite grasp how bad the last two were, and cling to the hope that former greatness might be restored.

- Low expectations set by previously awful attempts mean that your distinctly average attempt will now be acclaimed as very good, if not excellent.

- Congratulate PR people on repeating their success at fooling the public once again.

The greatest trick ever pulled by the Star Wars and Oasis commercial ventures was convincing people the bad stuff didn't exist. The PR machine's mass application of the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind means that, for all the awfulness that makes up the majority of the past, the paying public can only remember the minority of the top quality releases.

By hooking a certain demographic - a demographic of people who are now the gatekeepers of the relevant media - you ensure continued commercial success based on dumb habit, rather than rational assessment of quality. If economists ever needed reminding that the rational model of consumer behaviour is a fallacy that could never be approximated, let alone achieved in perfection, they should be pointed in the direction of the men whose deception of the masses, far from being declared criminal, is declared a profession: marketing.

Marketing creates gratuitous needs out of bogus wants; it creates avarice to oil the capitalist cogs; it places form above substance; and worst of all, for those of us who love music, it sucks the soul out of art by encouraging bands to aim for the lowest common denominator.

There is a cliché that is oft-repeated whenever Blur (or their various guises) and Oasis are the subject matter. It claims that Blur won the battle but Oasis won the war. What 'war' though? The commercial war is the only one that comes to mind; and that's a phony war based on the false premise that sales are the only measure of success. But wars should be judged not on who 'won' but on the collateral effects. If not commercially, then artistically, Blur/Albarn/Coxon's output adds far more to the rich tapestry of pop and rock music than the staid stadium rock of the Gallaghers.

The capitalist devil made flesh, the Gallagher brothers sold their souls to to the middle ground and have been rewarded with the money conned out of the record-buying public. In this respect, the association with New Labour and Tony Blair comes full circle.

Oasis did well to exploit the alliance of football and music. They somehow got their fan base to believe that their behaviour should be modelled on the football club paradigm. Loyalty to bands has always played some part in music, of course, and there has always been rivalry between bands, but Oasis exploited it in the worst way possible. The blind devotion of a true football fan, who loves one team and no other, and sticks with them through thin and thinner, should not - does not - apply to music. Whereas it's totally unacceptable for a football fan to have a polygamous relationship (certainly in the same league), it's perfectly acceptable to be promiscuous with your affections when it comes to music. The lot of the loyal Oasis fan is less like a loyal football fan, however, and more like that of the loyal domestically-abused wife, who knows the relationship is wrong yet cannot bring herself to leave.

To the album, then, which so many of you out there will buy, despite yourselves. (We're not immune to this kind of behaviour at Londonist, of course - after all, we still went to see Star Wars, Episode III, and hated ourselves for it.) It's just not right that a band of Oasis's commercial stature and age should still invite a 'spot the song or band copied' competition. But then, the word 'commercial' is key. Any artistic stature was long since reduced release after turgid release.

Turn Up The Sun sounds like the band trying to recapture the spirit of Definitely Maybe but forgetting to bring the melody to the party. Mucky Fingers sounds like the Supernaturals doing Velvet Underground with a sub-Charlatans-in-Dylan-mode harmonica solo (played with uncharming incompetence). Lyla's plodding lack of imagination (and, let's face it, shit lyrics) is typical of this album. Let There Be Love looks to the commercialism of What's The Story (Morning Glory)'s nursery rhyme anthems (with Definitely Maybe's Slide Away spliced into it). Oh, and surprise, surprise, it tries to ape The Beatles with its dual vocals. It also makes that classic mistake of thinking a string section automatically adds sensitivity to a song; in this context it merely polishes a turd. In between, standard Oasis-by-numbers - i.e. the sound of classic rock diluted to piss-weakness - pervades the album.

To sum up: this is single-paced, predictable, plodding dad rock; it lacks artistic creativity and credibility, features poor arrangements and harmonies that would receive a D grade if submitted as GCSE coursework; it is pastiche nonsense.

It might have been the slightly undercooked fruit bread Londonist baked over the weekend, but listening to this album literally led to a sick feeling in the stomach. It is not that it's truly awful, it is more to do with the incongruity between the amount of fawning this band receives from the music industry/press (one and the same entity) and the mediocre quality of the output. The tragedy of Oasis, and the reason they attract so many column inches, both positive and negative in tone, is that they could have been great. That they spurned the opportunity, that they decided to follow the Heat-lite path of least resistance and most money, that they exploited a public that would still have been theirs for the taking had they fulfilled the genuine rock'n'roll promise of the debut album, that they still shift units based on the initial promise that has long since been buried underneath the dirty money they have earned through treading water, that they 'inspired' so many copycats - could there be anything worse than mediocre imitations of mediocrity? - is reason enough to declare Oasis one of the worst things to happen to modern British music.

The Oasis album, replete with not-as-clever-as-it-thinks-it-is title of Don't Believe The Truth, will sell by the bucketloads, of course. Bad reviews like ours tend to be trampled underneath the PR behemoth and drowned out by the sheer noise of the undeserved fanfare generated by over-excited DJs and journalists, creaming themselves at the prospect of being even remotely-associated with people who squandered the chance to be truly great by gorging themselves on the feast of celebrity that commercialism provides. That not-so-clever title just begs for this final pay-off, though: Don't Believe The Truth? Don't believe the hype.

Reviews elsewhere, then, and let's start as we finished the Art Brut review, with Playlouder. Oh dear, 1 star. "Since when were Oasis about celebrating mediocrity?" (Londonist would say since What's the Story...) If you thought our review above was scathing, wait till you read Playlouder's:

Don't Believe The Truth is being praised for not being shit. Oh, and for ripping off someone different from The Beatles. What? The? FUCK? Since when has doing slightly better than average been worthy of praise? When you're trying to encourage a kid who struggles at Maths maybe, but when you're dealing with bloated multi- millionaire musicians who blow their own horns so loud they could fell the Walls of Jericho? Come on.

Whereas we were rather generous in that we at least give Oasis some sort of credit for a malign corporate knowingness, Playlouder suggest it could be stupidity:

Either Oasis are as thick as they seem, and still genuinely don't notice that their songs are about as original as a Plaster of Paris knock-off of Michelangelo's David with a 12-inch dong, or they are evil, and clever, know exactly what the increasingly corporate and mundane music industry wants, and are laughing all the way to the bank.

Oasis are... the keepers of some mass-produced psuedo-ideology that has millions [of] stupid, idiotic men, willing to never look beyond the next football match, next pint of weak lager, next pathetic, dribbling wank over some unfortunate suburban girl with her legs splayed in Razzle. This is music for them, and I want no part of it.

Drowned in Sound is slightly less vitriolic. Slightly. It awards 1.5 stars.

Fact: Oasis will never again make a great record. Why? Because, quite simply, they're not good enough. Lazy, disinterested, musically retroactive and professionally bankrupt... Those of you worried that Noel Gallagher only offers less than half the songs; don't worry - his contributions are amongst the worst.

The broadsheets are a little kinder.

The Independent, for instance, gives it three stars. Then again, it takes the line that Playlouder decried above.

With Don't Believe the Truth, Oasis continue to claw back some more of the ground lost with the abysmal Standing on the Shoulder of Giants.

It compounds this 'not as shit as the previous shit' commentary by telling us not to expect so much from

such a conservative band. Don't Believe the Truth isn't so much a makeover, more a restoration job designed to bring a little lustre back to familiar but tarnished features.

Taking a more positive statement from the review, The Independent says

There's a fair bit about "soul" on this album, which seems odd, as it's always been the thing most conspicuously absent from Oasis's music.

We reckon The Independent must be psychic if it can detect soul in this plastic nonsense but then it becomes clear. Those quotation marks weren't accidental. The "soul" to which The independent was referring was literal - in the lyrics, not in the delivery.

The Guardian gives another three star review, and it's another review in which the past looms large. Good for The Guardian in looking to the future more than anyone else, though:

Let's not get overexcited - it's no masterpiece - but this is the first Oasis album in a decade to suggest that they have a future rather than just a huge, asphyxiating past."

The Guardian's sister paper demonstrates a split personality, however. The normally reliable Kitty Empire proves to be... well, her normal, reliable self, with a balanced review which concludes:

"Ten years after they last burned bright on record, Oasis are still struggling to reignite themselves."

If only Ms Empire had more sway at the Observer Music Monthly. That particular publication appears to have fallen foul of its excitement at having received the album in time to produce the earliest review of them all. It wets its pants at excitement and throws its critical faculties out of the window with its 5 star review:

Don't Believe the Truth isn't a novel - or novelty - record but it makes you care about Oasis again, and makes you believe they can matter again. So our bond with them is renewed.

A comment that says less about the album and more about the awfulness of the Observer Music Monthly. (If only it could match the excellent Observer Food Monthly for editorial control.)

Sleater Kinney - The Woods.jpg

Sleater Kinney - The Woods

From the ridiculous to the sublime, then and an unprecedented double-review.

Londonista Mark has this to say:

A momentary howl of feedback before the drums and guitars kick in. If Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned then someone's really pissed off the girls from Sleater-Kinney. Huge drums smashed into submission underneath a barrage of Sherman tank heavy riffs. Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein trade fuzzed out guitar crunching with each other as the vocals etch themselves into your brain like a diamond etches glass until the song hangs on a final distorted fade.

Albums don't start much better than this. Not a whimper, not a bang but full on Nuclear Armageddon. And there's no stopping them. Wilderness sits on a funky scratchy guitar part that spirals off into classic rock runs and then takes a sudden side turn into a messy tortured solo. And underneath it all Janet Weiss's drums rolling and pounding like some demented Greek Titan on the lash. What's Mine Is Yours is all angular post punk jabs so beloved of Bloc Party and the like before collapsing once again into some distorted Hendrix noise fest and returning as a stoner-rock Sabbath sludge-fest. And all the time those drums. It's as if Dave Grohl and Animal were fused into female form and given a mission to destroy. It's hard to say just how powerful the drumming on this record is, anchoring the songs to a bedrock of fury and force.

Jumpers fuses 60's cheese with a touch of Document era REM and a slice of classic rock, Modern Girl is a gentle slice of mountain-folk sitting on a dynamite keg that never goes off, current single Entertain an insistent driving punk anthem. Each way you turn the album darts off into strange but wonderful places. Songs shift direction, sometimes returning, sometimes not. Clean sharp single note riffs give way to huge distorted chords crashing into each other like bodies in a moshpit; classic rock melodies mashed up with punk leads and monstrous dirty alt. rock choruses. Solos drop in and out again, as walls of sound and noise build around you. As well as trading licks Corin and Carrie share vocal duties covering a range from breathless chants to banshee scream. All executed with the same rage and power as every other instrument on the album. You need a rest after each track just to sit down and catch your breath.

Steep Air rumbles like a woken giant - dark and brooding, Let's Call It Love trades Led Zeppelin with an extended 70s psychadelic jam designed to leave bodies in its wake before phasing into Night Light's doomed haunting slice of arena sized rock.

3 years and one new record label (Sub Pop) have not calmed the ladies from Washington State one iota. The Woods of the title are a dark and angry place where we escape from useless lovers unable to offer commitment or companionship and from the mediocrity so prevalent in the modern world sucks the soul from us.

1, 2, 3! Give it to me easily,

my feeble mind needs time

1,2,3! Make it sweet and

syrupy with rhyme

they chant in Entertainment. We wonder whether the release date was intended to tie in with the moral banckruptcy that is Big Brother.

Modern Girl stabs at the idea of Sex And The City style emancipation, tying success to a shopping list life style. The Fox, Wilderness, Rollercoaster and Steep Air all tell tales of women, or possibly even men, looking for escape from trapped loveless lives where the promises of the future lie as empty and unfulfilled as the marital beds. But the darkest track is left to Jumpers the final thoughts of a young suicide victim as they head to the Golden Gate Bridge to jump.

I took a taxi to the gate

I will not go to school again

Four seconds was

The longest wait

All the more chilling in that it's also the gentlest song on the record.

The girls have looked around them and DO NOT like what they see. So they've turned their distaste and despondancy into this powerhouse of an album, devoid of the whinging and whining that fuels so much 'alternative' rock. Instead it's mature, razor sharp and unmerciful. A beauty of a beast that kicks like the afterburners on an F-14 Tomcat, angry, hellbent on destruction and yet focused. 10 visceral punk ravaged blasts of inventive and exciting noisy pop, beautifully constructed and produced by Flaming Lips / Mercury Rev man Dave Fridmann. For this Londonista, at least, album of the week, and one of the best rock albums of the year, possibly even the best so far. Recommended. And then some. (MM)

It's no secret that MM = Londonist Noise which must make your current reporter Londonist Pop Kid and a perspective of this album which goes a bit like this:

Sleater-Kinney have been going for years but signing to Sub Pop seems to have done their profile wonders. Taking a new tack on their seventh long-player, S-K have given us an exemplary piece of riot-grrrl rock that shouldn't scare off the boys. In fact, we almost feel guilty at using the lazy 'riot-grrrl' term. Ignore that, then: this is just good indie rock which happens to be made by women. Having said that, this may be a hard record but it is unmistakably the sound of strong women at work. The skill of the album is in taking the lead vocals as another instrument without giving it undue prominence. The vocals at times work almost like percussion and the production here skilfully mixes the elements into a perfectly-balanced ensemble. The album switches between heavy and light deftly - sometimes within the same song - so that your ears never tire from the aural onslaught.

The Fox is thunderous rock and thrilling, followed by Wilderness's comparative pop. Modern Girl is pure pop and a joy. Of course, a Sub Pop record couldn't be too pop, so the sweet melody gets the treatment, getting fuzzier in sound with levels turned up to the max to bring in enough distortion to make you stop thinking Sleater-Kinney have gone soft on you. Rollercoaster is more pop dressed in rock clothing and an effervescent trebly affair until halfway through the heavier drums kick in. This is a rock'n'roll record, of course, and just because there are strong melodies here shouldn't detract from the rock energy on display. What's Mine Is Yours is almost primal with its basic 4/4 drum beat verse and just-short-of-feedback guitar before fitting the template by filling in the instrumental blanks and rounding the sound out. Let's Call It A Night summons the spirit of Hendrix with an extended guitar solo work-out. Night Light adroitly juxtaposes heavy square-beat rhythm guitar with a lead guitar line that would stand its own ground proudly even without the expertly-delivered vocals.

For combining expertly the rock sound without obscuring it overtly, and for being expertly put together in contrasting the light and heavy, for being a record that both Londonist Noise (MM) and Londonist Pop Kid (K) love enough to post a double review, Sleater-Kinney deservedly get the coveted Londonist Album of the Week.

Why you'd care what anyone else thinks after that, we don't know, but here's what other critics think:

The Observer manages to publish a review which doesn't seem to offer much of an opinion and more of a description:

'What's Mine is Yours' is a user-friendly dance-along glam racket. But now Sleater-Kinney feel free to sound like the Pixies at their filthiest ('The Fox'). 'Let's Call it Love', meanwhile, is a feral sludge-blues that bucks and writhes, soloing, through 11 minutes.

The Guardian approves of the deft way Sleater Kinney have added a new dimension without losing the old qualities:

Brownstein's voice still seethes with sex, defiance and heartbreak, her life-endangering shrieks a goose bump-inducing thrill, but now she's matched by thunderous basslines, the production turned up to 10."

Plaudits for the production are also dished out by Dusted Magazine:

Tucker, Brownstein and Weiss reach their peak here as performers and songwriters, and Fridmann’s production provides a sense of warmth and spontaneity unequalled by their earlier work... an exhilaratingly positive listen; it’s full of the passion, sincerity, and creativity that no Franz Ferdinand or White Stripes, let alone a Britney or an Avril, could ever fabricate.

Finally, Rolling Stone gives a four-star review, approving of the recorded S-K sounding more like the live proposition.

More than any previous Sleater-Kinney record, The Woods reflects the classic-rock undercurrent that runs through the punk heroines' live shows.

You can stream the record from the official Sleater-Kinney site if the reviews above haven't convinced you to take the plunge.

Turin Brakes - JackInABox.jpg

Turin Brakes - JackInABox

"All in all, it's been a blast / Fame and fortune never last..."

This could easily be Turin Brakes' valediction were it not for the fact it's the first lines of the curiously typset JackInABox album. They Can't Buy The Sunshine is a cracking opener, in fact, with a beautifully laid-back American West Coast sound and the tight harmonies you'd expect from Turin Brakes. A well-crafted song, with excellent guitar playing and pleasing key changes, this is what you come to expect from the band and, indeed, you get this throughout the album.

The difference between this album and the last, however, is that the Brakes appear to have worked out that sometimes it's best not to lull your audiences to sleep with your sensitive ballads: Turin Brakes have discovered pace! It turns out that introductory single Fishing For A Dream was a perfect choice to preview the album: starting off predictably enough with the hallmark acoustic guitar and vocals, it served as a comfort blanket for those who liked to soundtrack their dinner parties with the gentle noodlings of the previous two albums. Just as the song is about to blend into the background, it grabs your attention with something just a little bit different, but not enough to scare the horses.

If you listen carefully, you notice the songs are actually more insistent than older efforts and the album does feel a little pacier than Ether Song. Red Moon, for instance, features a chorus that is positively heavy metal compared to usual expectations. You still get the glorious harmonies, of course, and the dextrous guitar playing still stands out, rather than being submerged underneath the raised volume. If the album hasn't caught your attention, then the penultimate track JackInABox is a veritable lightning-paced Andy Johnson compared to the rest of the album's Neil Shipperley. Final track Come and Go completely wrong-foots you with its bossa-nova beat. It's a gentle beat, naturally, but nonetheless it's bossa nova.

Fans of Old Turin Brakes will be pleased that the Brakes relatively untweaked sound is much in evident on tracks like Forever, Asleep With The Fireflies, Road To Nowhere and Last Clown, which sounds like a re-make of Underdog (Save Me) from The Optimist LP. The key difference seems to be that the songs are, well, major key. Whereas putting a Turin Brakes album and actually listening to it (as opposed to putting it on as pleasant background snogging music) could be a depressing matter, JackInABox just seems a happier proposition, even if the lyrics aren't (the almost-Britpop Over and Over and Above The Clouds being good examples).

We were approaching having to review this album with dread, to be honest, and we were pleasantly surprised. Whereas previous Turin Brakes albums have felt like winter nights to us, the release date for JackInABox is appropriate: this is Spring trying to burst into Summer and will be a welcome addition to the seasonal soundtrack this year.

The Observer, in common with us, detects the sunlight:

Instead of their usual down-in-the-mouth strumming, JackInABox offers a little futurist bossanova and even twangy funk

although it does note

the rising damp of Olly Knights's singing voice

The Independent sees past that enough to award four stars, noting

the positive tenor of an album in which there's no need to hurry, and no cause for concern.

In describing the album's difference from the previous one, they say

for most of the album they've settled on a style which tempers those folkie impulses with slinky, blue-eyed funk rhythms laced with tasty soul guitar licks straight out of Memphis or Muscle Shoals.

However, we'll give the final word to the review that swims against the tide. Those indie kids at Drowned in Sound are very angry, so very angry.

"What’s [sic] in the name of fuck is this?"

We thought we were reading the Oasis review for a moment when they said

For Christ’s sake, if you’re going to be shit now at least don’t drag your one good album down with you.

Ah well, you can't please all the people all the time.

And that concludes this week's mammoth MMROT. We didn't have time to review the following which are also released this week:

The Black Eyed Peas - Monkey Business

Rob Thomas - Something To Be

Last Updated 31 May 2005