By: Christian Hagen
“From the Shelf” is a new series in which I will be digging through the seemingly endless CDs and MP3s in my possession which I’ve never listened to (or do not remember listening to). It may seem unusual for someone to have a significant amount of music in their position they’ve never heard. I have many explanations for how these items came to be in my possession: I have received several albums from labels and PR companies. I have friends who like to dump their old crappy CDs they get for some reason on me. I also have a friend who used to work for a company that basically gave him stacks of new release CDs for free; he has so many, he’s just started giving them away, and many have ended up in my collection. I pick up free discs in coffee shops and record stores and nightclubs whenever I find them, and other people I know do the same and give them to me when they find them. I download free promotional MP3s from labels and bands whenever such things become available (which is surprisingly often). I even went through a long phase of trading CDs online back when Lala was still a CD trading service (and before, you know, it was shut down).
Essentially, I have too much music, and, until now, I’ve lacked the desire to listen to all of it. Now, the time has come to dust off the cases and pop in the thrown away recordings that have collected over the years in my keeping.
This first post showcases the extreme outcomes that will likely come as a result of my chosen endeavors. The first, a surprising gem, a happy accident that I’m now proud to call a part of my library. The second…well, I guess you can read about that one.
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The Black Ghosts, The Black Ghosts
Reviewed by: Christian Hagen
The initial impressions one might have when beginning their journey through the electro forest that is The Black Ghosts’ debut album could easily include confusion and malaise. The opening track, “Some Way Through This” is, at least on the first listen, moody and vocally straining, and hardly showcases a group making exciting or enjoyably listenable music.
But if one keeps listening, digs deeper, one will strike gold in this musical mine. Each track on the self-titled release from these UK technophiles is weighted with riches, and few require the layer-scratching approach needed to find the actual promise buried in that first track. Most are immediately satisfying. The Steely Dan-cum-disco “It’s Your Touch” finds its legs quickly, and finds Ghosts Theo Keating and Simon Lord focusing on talents beyond their beats, showing off some impressive vocal harmonies. “Until It Comes Again” hums with a hard funk energy and shines thanks to a keen melodic ear.
The album features a surprising range. From the gloom of the opener (which really thrives under repeat listens), the Ghosts slide from house dance to sexy jazz to funk to quiet rock to pop with a deftness that is continually surprising, and yet feels consistently unique to this group. The stellar vocal flourishes add dimension to the whole production and make each genre hop both fresh and familiar at the same time. The Black Ghosts are an upbeat Solid Gold as translated by Hot Chip, and with perhaps a more easy-going, long-lasting presence than either.
Electro-pop groups in this day and age need a unique voice and an organic musical sensibility to survive. The Black Ghosts seem to have both well in hand. If they keep pushing forward, they might just surprise everyone and explode.
Rating: 91%
Forever the Sickest Kids, The Weekend: Friday
Reviewed by: Christian Hagen
When I set about to do this series, the one thing that most seriously held me back was the fact that I’d have to sift through music like that of corporate neon pop-punk nightmare Forever the Sickest Kids. To call Forever the Sickest Kids irritating would to call diamond-grade sandpaper irritating. Sure, it works as a textbook definition, but the word hardly encapsulates the pain and destruction it can enact on a person.
This “album” (hard to use the term, as it clocks in at only 20 minutes, though sadly it feels more like 50) is part of a planned three-part shit opus about the three days of the weekend.
Appropriately, FtSK avoid any meaningful discussion on the emotions that accompany the high school experience and focus entirely on girls. And of course, they focus on girls in the most shallow ways imaginable, exemplified by the vaguely offensive “Hip Hop Chick.” In this song, lead singer Jonathon Cook expounds upon his oh-so-unusual relationship with a girl who listens to *gasp* hip-hop music. The whole song seems to surround the notion that this musically confused partnership shouldn’t be able to last, yet somehow it does, though I still have no idea why, as the only details the listener gets about this girl is the kind of music she listens to and the way she dances. At one point, whine-singer Cook complains, “I listen to Zepplin/I don’t listen to Jay-Z,” though I find this assertion more than a little dubious as one listen to any Zepplin album should make Cook so ashamed of himself that he never records another note as long as he lives.
Laden with sunny synths and two-chord verses and grating, basic vocal horrors, Forever the Sickest Kids (their name continuing the tradition of the worst pop-punk bands pretending they are the hardest or coolest rockers on the block when any serious punk musician would probably swallow broken glass before recording anything as crassly commercial and dreadful as this) are closer to The Jonas Brothers than The Clash, though both outclass them by a mile. Now let’s hope that this is the worst I’ll have to deal with in this series.
Rating: 04%
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