music

Resistance album cover

Before I begin, I would like to say that I’m a big Muse fan. I have all their albums and have seen them live a few times.

That being said, Resistance is crap. Let me list the ways:

1. Uprising: The BBC have unveiled the new Dr. Who theme tune. Seems like they’ve chosen Call Me by Blondie
2. Resistance: Pretty generic college rock with some electronics
3. Undisclosed Desires: Someone’s been watching too much Smash Hits and VH1. New Wave with hip-hop beats? No thanks.
4. United States Of Eurasia: Otherwise known as Queen Tribute Act. And why stick on some Chopin on the end?
5. Guiding Light: Can’t think of anything interesting to say about this song. I suppose, Muse have never been at their best when writing slower songs.
6. Unnatural Selection: A crap cover version of one of their best songs, New Born
7. MK Ultra: Probably sounds ok live is about the nicest thing I can think of.
8. I Belong To You: What the fuck are Maroon 5 doing in my Muse album?
9. Exogenesis: Half decent but not the incredible epic it had been hyped to be.

This album is an overproduced mess. The past few albums have certainly shown that Muse do like epic and elaborate sounds, but they’ve also contained subtlety and nuance. The Resistance discards all of that and the end result is a bland mish-mosh of ideas that is completely toothless.

I used to think that Muse’s music and interviews were carried out with a knowing sense of the absurd, yet The Resistance and recent comments (Matt Bellamy seeks an audience with Peter Mandelson to fight piracy) makes me think that they actually believe everything they say and their own hype.

Following on from my previous list of The Honourably Mentioned Albums Of 2008, I hereby grant you access to the albums I enjoyed most last year. As before, the list is ordered alphabetically.

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So it’s that time of year again – The End. And what is there to do at the end of the year other than make lists? I didn’t know either so lists were made and here I present them to you. I have decided that I shant put them in a numerical order as it would be, at best, arbitrary. But they must be ordered somehow otherwise they would overlap and you wouldn’t be able to make head nor tail of what was written; so I chose my favourite means of sorting: alphabetically.

So what will happen is that in this here blog post I shall press upon you the albums that are highly recommended but fell just short of being in the best albums of the year. Some time in the future I shall write up the list of my favourite albums of 2008 but, as this one took me so long to write, it shall have to wait a while.

I must add that, of course, I did not listen to every album that was recorded this year so this list should not be considered a holy writ. It is merely the albums that I enjoyed and thought you might too (especially you, Alan).

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Merriweather Post Pavilion album cover

So I have just returned from the delightful Monorail where the new Animal Collective album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, was being played ahead of its release on 12th Jan. I am a late passenger on the Animal Collective train as I only really started to listen to them this year after much prompting from Richard. And lo it was Richard again who convinced me to go tonight. He really loves his Animal Collective! But anyway, you’re not here to read about Richard (or are you?).

The new album is quite a departure from Strawberry Jam (of which I am most familiar with) but Richard asures me that this is par for the course with AC; they are consistently inconsistent. Opening track In The Flowers lets you know this straight away as it’s a completely different kettle of fish from Peacebone, which opened their previous album. While their rampant usage of weird-and-wonderful-sounds-which-somehow-meld-together is still here, there’s a more natural feel to these sounds; as if Mother Earth had given the band a collection of samples from her mixing decks. But it’s the vocals that really differentiate Merriweather from their past work. Put simply, they’re sublime. Put slightly more complicatedly, it’s as if they are channeling The Beatles to produce some lush, multi-layered harmonies that tingle the ears.

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Monorail Music

Summertime Clothes contains probably the best examples of this new vocal work but since I don’t have that on mp3 you shall have to make do with My Girls. And by “make do”, I mean “enjoy lots”. Another notable track would be the album closer, Brothersport. A bit dancier than the rest of the album, you could tell that every person in the room was itching to cast their chairs to the side and strut their funky stuff.

Or that could have been just me.

All in all, it seems to me that Animal Collective has a winner on their hands. The album has a nice flow and I’m rather looking forward to it. It is probably worth noting that if you don’t like their other output then I don’t think this will change your mind.

As you can probably tell, I’m not a music journalist so please excuse my rather crappy descriptions and, as I have only heard the album once, I make no claims of this being accurate. It is just based on my admittedly flawed memory.