Matt's iPod

Remix #1: Swollen Members - Armed to the Teeth

2009-12-07T23:24:00.000-08:00

Alright, I've decided to throw a little wrench in the mix. I went to see (in)famous Canadian rap group Swollen Members this past Wednesday, and felt like I needed to take a little time to review their newest offering, Armed to the Teeth. This post is titled a "remix" because it contains an album that wasn't on my original list.

Bringing up Swollen Members to a Canadian child of the 00's will net you a response of "Oh yeah; they're still around?" Yes, children, it's true; the Members are still alive and kicking, and sadly, trying to catch up with a rap game that just doesn't suit them right.

Eventually I'll get to the group's albums somewhere down the road (I'm guessing 2011; bear with me!), but for now I'll just say this: Armed to the Teeth really isn't a good addition to their discography. In a sentence, the album is bad because it is trying to catch up to a genre of music that does not suit them.

As we're ending the decade we can plot a certain evolution of hip-hop; today's auto-tune laced songs begot the crunk beats, and the crunk beats begot something else. Swollen Members were at their peak during the 2001-2003 period, when songs like "Fuel Injected" and "Breathe" got some heavy airplay on MuchMusic. However, that style has fallen out of favour, and in perhaps a bad production decision, Armed to the Teeth has succeeded in catching up to its brethren. However, there is a steep cost: it doesn't sound like Swollen Members anymore.

Let's do a comparison, shall we?

First song is from their new album, the second from their second. Notice the difference? Perhaps the lack of "bitches" and auto-tune?

I like the group because of their (some might say surprisingly) intelligent lyrics and amazing delivery; these songs, however, tend to be the ones that didn't make it to the "mainstream" of Canadian music. Armed to the Teeth seems to be sending a message that "We tried, guys. We need to pay our bills, now." Ramped up misogyny on tracks like "Bollywood Chick" and "Porn Star" doesn't really score them any points; in short, less gangster, more scholar.

I get the feeling that Mad Child, who has always been the more "gangsta" one of the duo, had a hand in this evolution. Bandmate Prevail put out a pretty solid EP recently; hopefully their next album, Beautiful Death Machine (due in 2010), will be a flip side.

Three spirals into mediocrity out of five.

Album #12: Beck - Mellow Gold

2009-12-07T23:08:00.000-08:00

I’d like to think that these reviews have gone well so far; I haven't outright hated any of these albums yet. I mean, they all have a place in my iPod and can be enjoyed in different situations and moods.

Oh boy, is that about to change.

I almost feel sorry for Mellow Gold; I mean, Beck hit it big with "Loser", and everyone kind of took notice all of a sudden. That's got to feel great for an artist.

Sadly, after three songs in, my mind went to mush. Following "Fucking With My Head (Mountain Dew Rock)", I was welcomed by the drawling "Whiskeyclone, Hotel City 1997", which is possibly the most boring and depressing song I've listened so far in this experiment. Besides Beck's incomprehensible rambling and just plain weird sound, I just felt like I wasn't the right type of crazy to appreciate it. It's almost ludicrous to say that I've got bored listening to this song, but it was true; I found my eyes wandering and my toes tapping, wanting it to be over so I could move onto something else.

This feeling proceeded to stay with me for the rest of the album. The only glimmer of light from the murky underbog was "Beercan", but man, by then, I was ready to lop off the head of this album and keep it on my mantelpiece; I mean, it's like shooting a deer: you may mangle the body horribly when you pump it full of buckshot (or hit it with your car), but as long as the head's intact, you've got something to cherish.

Jesus Christ, I need sleep.

One and a half frustrated remarks of "I should be high for this" out of five.

Album #11: Beck - Guero

2009-11-21T13:19:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting on a coach bus right now on the way home to Toronto and I figure it would be as good a time as any to get some writing done. So out comes the iPod and on comes some Beck!

Beck's Guero is another album I picked up, shamefully, because of Rock Band. The song "E-Pro" is on the game and I enjoyed it. I had heard of Beck beforehand but he always seemed like this psychedellic hippie that wasn't quite my style, so I just ignored it for the most part. Coming back to my love of rhyming, I was surprised to find out that yes, this white boy could rhyme.

"E-Pro" notwithstanding I found myself enjoying the second track on the album "Que Onda Guero." This is partly because of my pseudo-Mexican friend Steph and the hilarity that's been experienced to this song. It's just this mis-mash of Cypress Hill-esque rhyming and a lingering essence of Cheech and Chong. It's madcap, and I love it.

The rest of the album is surprisingly good, and this is the only Beck album I have on my iPod aside from Odelay that I find myself listening to on a regular basis. Beck's other albums were pretty much the reason I started this blog being that I have his discography on my player and never really listened to anything but Guero and Odelay.

So yeah, I can say that I genuinely like this album; it's got some good moments and it's a rarity in that it flows well as one cohesive story. Beck's almost got that same pseudo-mexicanity as my friend Steph does, and it shows in his work; who knows, maybe it's just a phase or a concept, but I like seeing my musicians get a little bit adventurous.

Anyways, four sombreros out of five for Guero. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go catch up on my Spanish.

Albums #8, 9 and 10: Beat Crusaders

2009-11-19T20:50:00.000-08:00

Alright, so this time things are going to be a bit different. I've got a bunch of albums on my iPod that are either part of greater compilations or just have so few songs spread across different albums that I'm just going to lump them all into one. The Beat Crusaders are one of these bands, and this blog post is going to cover three of their albums: "A-PopCALYPSE NOW", "Hit in the USA" and a soundtrack from an anime, Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad.

Yes, I can hear your cries now: "You watch that stuff?" And the answer is, yes, I do. It isn't all tentacle-raping and Dragonball Z fight scenes, don'tchaknow; Beck just happened to be a weird coincidence: the creator is pretty much as big of a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan as I am, and the soundtrack he picked for the show is basically an embodiment of my taste, as a whole. The show is basically about a band trying to make it big; in short, if they were a real band, I would buy their music. I'll be writing about them later.

If you haven't figured by now, Beat Crusaders are a Japanese band that straddle the line between pop-punk and grunge, depending on which songs you're listening to. Some of their stuff is just plain sickening in its bubblegum quality, but other songs, like "50 Cent Wisdom", which I've posted below (sorry about the shitty background in the video), are nicely grunge-y and have those nice rolling guitar riffs that seem to pop up in a lot of my tastes.

I'm a sucker for bands with quirky personalities, and BECR (leave it to the Japanese to take out as many letters as possible for their abbreviations) fit into this well; pretty much all their live appearances are featuring them wearing dot-matrix-printer-esque masks like the one in the picture above. It's weird in the fact that you're almost committing yourself to one look and facial expression; I wonder if fans take it as face (heh) value or try to delve a little deeper.

50 Cent Wisdom's my favourite track of the bunch because it just reminds me of what I listen to when I give Beck another good read-through; a little bit of hope that one day, with a little hard work, we can all make it to where we dream to be.

Three and a half gumballs out of five due to sugar rush.

Album #7: Beastie Boys - To The Five Boroughs

2009-10-19T21:38:00.001-07:00

By the time I'm reviewing this I'm so very sick of listening to Beastie Boys, I might have to come back to it.

Anyways. This album's the Beasties' latest release, and I count it as such because an all-instrumental album just plain doesn't count. Its age shows (2002), as we've got the post-9/11 Bush Bashing ("Right Right Now Now") and the New York nationalism that's pretty overbearing throughout the whole thing.

I'm curious to see whether this is the only record that seems to be guilty of time travel; the majority of the tracks sound like they're from earlier in the Beastie Boys' catalog, production-wise. Some of the songs ("3 The Hard Way", "Hey Fuck You", "Triple Trouble") feel very rushed, or as if someone just really lazy with Fruity Loops tutorials and decided to sell their beats as credible. I don't know if this was a step towards a new direction for the band, but these crappy beats, along with decidedly less hardcore rock songs gives this album a lower standing in my tier list of Beastie Boys albums.

The High Points:
- "Ch-Check It Out"
- 50 Cent lyric ideas ((voicemail voice)"Hey Adam, it's Felicia. Hey Mike, it's Felicia. Hey Adam, it's Felicia." (Beastie Boys:) "And we don't give a fuck if it's Felicia!")

The Low Points:
- Lazy samples (Rapper's Delight? Seriously?)
- "We got a president we didn't eLECT/Kyoto treaty he decided to neGLECT." Hoo boy.

One and a half pictures of crying fire-fighters out of five.

Album #6: Beastie Boys - Ill Communication

2009-09-23T21:41:00.001-07:00

Oh, the Beastie Boys. Still so new to my listening tastes, yet so... welcome. It's becoming a bit difficult to explain the role of a specific artist over and over in consecutive reviews, so I'm not going to go into it here.

However, what I will say is that Ill Communication isn't just an album: it's a commitment. This fucker is a full 20 tracks, which seems a little long-winded by today's standards. The token white boys could've easily split this into a double album, but I don't think it'd fit their style; go big or go home, you know?

The Beasties do the whole "alternating between hip-hop and hardcore" thing that they did so well on Check Your Head, but it seems that they learned something from that last album. The background beats have gotten much better in comparison to Check's, and the loops themselves are quite catchy. Some of my favourite songs from the Boys are on this album ("Sure Shot", "Flute Loop").

Then you hit Sabotage, and the world goes red. Sabotage is one of those songs you can just rage to. The intro gets me every time: hard hits on the drum, a screaming intro that rises in crescendo and a subtle guitar riff that makes you feel that you're getting ready to beat that tar out of someone. I always feel like the ultimate live cover of this song would be sung best by De La Rocha, Kiedis, and Ad-Rock. Only the final verse, however; you think it's all over, but it comes back, rearing its ugly head and biting off the heads of those who dare challenge it.

Song-induced imagery is something I enjoy.

I found it hard to find a stretch of time that I could listen to the entire album from front to back, but that's more a fault of mine than of it. I'm really tempted to give this album a perfect score, but is there such a thing? Surely I could find something wrong with it, but at the moment, I just can't.

Man, that seems like a bit of a downer; a pessimistic reviewer can't really do his job well, can he?

Aw, screw it.

Five broken "white boys can't rap" stereotypes out of five.

Album #5: Beastie Boys - Check Your Head

2009-08-31T21:10:00.000-07:00

Awww yeah, it's about to get a little funky in here.

I mean.
Yes.

Beastie Boys are a relatively new addition to my iPod, and I'm ashamed to say it's because of Rock Band; yes, I know, what little credibility I had in music review has now been thrown into the gutters.

It's true, dear readers; "So Whatcha Want" was the driving force in adding Check Your Head onto my trendy disk drive, but I'll happily endure whatever jabs you can throw at me, because damn, I enjoy this album. Within the last year my music tastes have changed towards more older rap, and in turn, appreciation for the delivery of verses in relative scale to the complexity of the content.

While Check Your Head returns to the Beastie Boys' hardcore roots at times, I find that it brings a balance that's quite rare in CDs overall; one of my main complaints about a band's music will be that the album itself lacks a certain something that ties it together from start to finish.

Anyways, there's a great change in pace around the track "Groove Holmes", that just mellows you right down while the following "Live at P.J.'s" is very funk-bass-and-guitar heavy. I found myself bouncing a little during that transition; there's nothing better than a low rolling bassline.

So, for the honour of being the first reviewed album that I genuinely liked from beginning to finish, I'm going to throw Check Your Head four and half monkey posters out of five. Reasoning for that comes from the album cover; it's sneaky, but they managed to get in the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil motif.

Album #4: Beast - Beast

2009-08-16T21:19:00.000-07:00

Congrats, Beast, you're the newest (in terms of added date, not chronological date) album on my iPod. I got recommended this album by Maya, a friend of mine who was streaming herself painting in Photoshop one night. A song (don't remember which) by Beast came on, and well, I had to know what the story was.

If I had to describe Beast in a phrase, it would be "Mindless Self Indulgence without the uppers." The Montreal band has a very heavy industrial sound punctuated by some very haunting vocals by both males and females.

I'm not usually that drawn to darker-sounding stuff, but man, I think it was the hip-hopesque verses of the opening track "Devil" that brought me into it; I love rhyming in all ways, shapes and forms. I mean, hip-hop, rapcore and this kind of mystical blend all have their different qualities; they bring different things to the table that satisfy different parts of my palate in turn.

I think my appreciate for rhyming comes from the fact that the creative emphasis gets puts on the lyrics themselves instead of hitting certain notes in sequence with smooth transitions. Don't get me wrong, delivery is definitely still extremely important, but I feel that the content in the lycs being pushed to the forefront brings out the best in the people who write them.

Anyways, this whole album is pretty solid, but I find I can only listen to it when I'm in the corresponding dark and moody state of mind. I'm going to keep tabs on Beast; this was their first album, and I'm sure they're going to grow into something unique. The only problems I have with the album is that there seems to be nothing defining about the album; not to say it's forgettable, but there isn't a song that sticks in my mind or forces itself into the list of songs that play in my head on shuffle. That isn't to say it won't one day with a little maturation, but for now, it's pleasantly mediocre.

Three and a half NIN t-shirts out of five.

Album #3: Asher Roth - Asleep in the Bread Aisle

2009-08-13T19:23:00.000-07:00

Alright ladies and gents, it's time for the hat trick.

Sadly this is one album I only have one song from; presumably Eminem Jr.'s future one-hit-wonder, the song "I Love College", appealed to me so much at one point that I just had to add it to my iPod instead of just watching it on Youtube, getting sick of it, then waiting for it to come back again.

I think that would have probably been a smarter choice.

Well, thinking about it, I Love College is one of those songs I listen to when I'm not really preoccupied with an image of myself that I'm trying to convey. Really, when I listen to it, I truly tend to not give a shit. This is key, because anyone who listens to this song thinking that it is both an accurate representation of college life that doesn't involve a liberal arts major and that the people in the below music video would act like that without being paid gratuitously, you have another thing coming.

This is also a song I tend to have on my iPod for the express purpose of having "on hand" in case someone snakes it for party music. It's sampled (well, "inspired", since Weezer wouldn't sign off on it) from a song that everyone knows from Rock Band, therefore lending pseudocredibility that the song might actually have some class to it; however, it sadly falls short.

Two hangovers out of a five.

Album #2: Andrew W.K - I Get Wet

2009-07-29T15:10:00.000-07:00

Finally, the good stuff. See, I Get Wet was a much better album from Andrew W.K because of the raw emotion that was present within.

I remember listening to a few singles ("Party Hard" and "She is Beautiful") when they achieved a little bit of mainstream success when the album first came out. Back then I didn't have the magical method of torrenting to get full albums, so picking up various mislabeled songs wherever I could was the norm.

Ah, some good times to this album. I remember "Party Hard" being the first ever song I played on my first iPod back in 2005, and many a shower rock out was had to the song, as well. From what people say Andrew's a pretty nice guy, and his hard-rock power anthems kind of carry that; my impression of the artist usually comes from the music itself, and in this case I picture a fun-loving guy who may or may not be stoned out of his mind when he writes some of his stuff.

This is a rare album that I can say I enjoy most, if not all, of the tracks; my only complaint is that "Don't Stop Livin' In The Red" seems to be a bit of a brick wall in terms of energy. It's kind of a big slowdown that was maybe intended to bring the listener back to the sluggish pace of the real world, but it's very abrupt. AW.K also kind of suffers from the "songs sound the same" syndrome, but not as bad as others; his songs are to be taken at face value, with partying, having a good time and quasi-romantic rocker love as identifiable themes. Really, this is a good album to release some energy to, and like any good friend, Andrew's down to do whatever as long as it leads to a good time. As a result, I give it four awesome nights out of five.

Album #1: Andrew W.K - Close Calls With Brick Walls

2009-07-27T19:16:00.001-07:00

Alright ladies and gents, here's album number one on the list of albums that's currently on my iPod. Whenever I open my "artists" menu, Andrew W.K always seems to smack me right in the face, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

However, because "Close Calls with Brick Walls" comes before his debut album "I Get Wet" (tune in next time!), I get the displeasure of reviewing it first.

It's no means a horrible album, but sadly it doesn't have the same feeling that makes "I Get Wet" amazing; Andrew W.K.'s claim to fame is that his music is energetic, powerful and borderline riotous. However, "Close Calls" suffers from Andrew's own creativity, as he sadly decided to ditch his backing band and play every instrument on the album by himself. Yes, I know this is an impressive feat, but I think that the collaboration with a band, backing or not, kept his over ambitiousness in check; there's some songs on this album that I simply wasn't prepared to hear, and as a result I ended up not liking it too much.

What I did like, however, was a few choice songs that echoed his prior greatness: "Pushing Drugs" uses a very maniacal piano while "Slam John Against the Brick Wall" has a haunting energy that ramps up as the song progresses. The latter's a very good song to hype yourself up to; you kind of absorb the energy from the chanting crowd and let it get behind you.

While Andrew is either on ten types of drugs or is genuinely a very nice guy with too much energy, I commend his effort to expand his creativity. However, this album falls under the category of an album I have on my iPod simply for completion's sake. I'm still deciding how I'm going to rate these albums, so for now let's just use a simple 1-5 star system. This being my first review, I'm going to give Andrew a break because I believe his character makes up for the lack of form on this album. Three broken up parties out of five.

Album #0: Why I'm Doing This

2009-07-27T18:31:00.000-07:00

So I was at work today and decided to listen to a full album of music. While I was going from track one to track whatever I realized that this was one of the few albums on my iPod that I could actually enjoy doing this for. It kind of struck me that there's a lot of music on my music player that I either don't enjoy, or just never listened to. Because of the potential embarrassment that's associated with not having the complete product in the event of someone looking through your tunes, the completionist in me tends to rip or download the full album for storage; this happens even if I happen to only enjoy one song.

Maybe a little bit more about me is in order.

My name's Matt, and at the time of this posting, I'm a 20 year old Journalism student. I live in Canada, and write for a number of blogs online; you can find my writing primarily here and my other blog, Crave Thought.

While I was listening to the aforementioned album I thought of an idea; in order to re-examine the music on my iPod, and why I have that music on there in the first place, I thought I might go from the first album on the list to the last in alphabetical order (by artist), listen it from start to finish and review it. Hopefully with each review I'll gain a little bit more insight into my music tastes and why I tend to be so damned picky with what I listen to.

If you guys want to see what I listen to on a regular basis, feel free to check out my Last.Fm, which has a decent listing of what's been on my iTunes/iPod/Winamp/Foobar for the last couple years. As you can see from there, I'm a big fan of both the Red Hot Chili Peppers, 311 and the Boards of Canada; though those three bands make up my Top 3 played artists, I'd like to think I'm a little bit more... diverse. I'd explain, but well, you'll see eventually.

For the purposes of the experiment, I'm link to a list of all the albums that are currently on my iPod. This is the list I'm going to be working through, and in the event I -gasp- add new music to my iPod, I'll get around to it when I feel like it.

Hope you enjoy. If you guys have any comments or ideas for this blog, feel free to comment on this post.