Between The Lines – Stone Temple Pilots – “You always were my favorite drug even when we used to take drugs”, is so lazy, smug… indolent, that’s the word, the sneer is built in for all the squares while Scott Weiland, poster boy for all the things drugs can and can’t do for you gives the line all the swagger a junkie rock star can muster as he slithers all over the stupified and standing bubble yum hooks and crunchy frog guitar. Like he hasn’t moved a step but hasn’t lost a step either. Grunge and smack waltz into the abyss together because the sound was a high/high/low act confused as to where the cool came from next.Now STP try to dust down the corpse and only to find the same old skeletons. On The Helen Bach W/M scale it gets a WOOT.
Poker face – Glee Cast – Arrange American Pop as though it was the great American song book and you don’t have to qualitify your built in irony. A cute trick once, twice, twenty times. But enough already, we got it. What is the fun in taking all the fun out of the song. And any way, Lady Gaga doesn’t stand up to having her songs sung like she is Cole porter. Which she fucking isn’t. MEH
Cuffin (feat Gucci Mane) – Cam’ron – I got this as well. Sure I loved last years Cam’ron, but this year the Black is my Preident, gold are my bullets, nursery rhyme ganagsta shit is wearing me down. And even the great Gucci Mane ain’t bringing it down. Borderline MEH.
Getting’ Drunk And Fallin’ Down – Hank Williams III – This really, really sucks. I’d like to take that fucking fiddler and smack it over III’s head. Neither drunk nor hungober, it whinges away till it stops. MEH
The Word – Betye Lavette – yeah, I’ve read the four star review in the Post and the rave in NYT. Sleep easy Aretha, till this chick gets an arranger willing to tell her it is RIDICULOUS to rewrite the melody to this song. Why not just write your own for fuck’s sake. MEH
Maybe I’m Amazed – Betye Lavette – This might get better by the end, no really, I have never gotten that far. What the fuck? THE LYRIC DOESN’T STAND UP TO ALL THIS FUCKING HEAVY LIFTING, it takes her a minute to get thru the first verse. I have heard the future of soul music and there is no future. It reminds me of Peters Sellers version of “A Hard Day’s Night” -except Sellers was in on the joke.
Buddha – Traingle Sun – is a Russian music project which is sorta electronic ambient and this songs bangs into Bollywood before floating back under the radars with bleeps and bloops, sorta wendy carlos playing a full orchestra who only wake up up once or twice. WOOT
Spanish Pipedream – John Prine – The singer-songwriters singer-songwriter getting awful cute in a live setting on this splashy slashy rockabilly talkathon. WOOT
The Ghost Who Walks – Karen Elson – More like ran away from this really terrible piece of… what? Self important alterna-crap.this is why hotshot no thing dragatharusses like White should never marry models who think they are singers because they perform fellatio well enough to get self-righteous thick heads like White to a) marry em (which is his problem) and b) record em (which is mine or at least it was mine since I plan on never listening or writing about it again…) MEH
Lazy Day – Beach Fossils – A lo fo fuzzed out acoustic fuzzathon, as though Belle And Sebastian decided to go fire everybody but the guitarist or b) Brian Wilson decided to drink gin hard liquer through a vocodor while shooting the harmonies, forgetting the tune and the pacing or even he wrote “Surfer Girl” at all so all is left is the memory of a memory of a song. In other words not just a WOOT but also SONG OF THE WEEK.
Ya Lo Se Que Tu Vas – Marc Anthony – Every time you feel like claiming somebody, say Celine, really sells a power ballad, listen to this song off mr. Lopez’s newbie. Afull blown, to the rooftops, heaby enunciated, heavy sung and yes omg, heaby felt Spanish Novella set to song (though not to melody). WOOT.