- joiezabel in Scarlett Johansson - Anywhere I Lay My Head it really is brilliant, scott. i hate you.
- hotshotrobot in Scarlett Johansson - Anywhere I Lay My Head Goddammit, Borch, now how am i supposed to review this? I can’t top that!
- Borch in The Avett Brothers - House of Blues - May 14th Good Lord, that’s a beautiful song! The Avett Bros. were in Chicago? Why wasn’t I notified?!
I will merely report today’s verdict in the Jeanette Sliwinski case, as reported by the Chicago Tribune. I will point out that being sentenced to 8 years means that she can be released in 4 for good behavior, and with 2.5 years already served, she could be back on the street in one and a half years. This is all i will say about this, because i am a professional and you do not need to hear the rant that is begging to be vomited all over my keyboard.
Jeanette Sliwinski, the former model convicted last month in the deaths of three Chicago musicians who were killed when she rear-ended a car in which they were riding during a failed suicide attempt, was sentenced today to 8 years in prison.
Cook County Circuit Judge Garritt Howard, who found Sliwinski guilty but mentally ill on reckless homicide charges Oct. 26, imposed the sentence during an emotional hearing in the Skokie courtroom where he presided over her bench trial.
Prosecutors had asked that Sliwinski of Morton Grove receive the maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
Sliwinski, 25, who has been held in the psychiatric ward of Cook County Jail since the July 2005 lunchtime crash at Dempster Street and Niles Center Road in Skokie, apologized to the relatives and friends of the victims who were in the courtroom, before being sentenced. She could be released from prison in a few years if she receives good-time credit.
“There’s not a day that goes by I do not think about the grief and the pain I have caused,” Sliwinski, weeping, told the judge while looking toward the victims’ families. “I never meant to hurt anybody. I’m sorry.”
Mental-health services would be available to Sliwinski in whatever prison she is assigned to, prosecutors said.
Sliwinski’s relatives were on hand for the sentencing as were relatives and friends of the men killed in the crash—Chicagoans Michael Dahlquist, 39, John Glick, 35, and Douglas Meis, 29. At the time of the accident, the men were on their lunch break from work at Shure Inc., a Niles company that makes microphones and other audio electronic products.
Sliwinski pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the crash after being charged with first-degree murder. She told authorities she had gotten in a fight with her mother in the family’s Morton Grove home before she got in her car, drove east on Dempster and slammed into Dahlquist’s car at a stop light.
In his ruling, the judge rejected the first-degree murder charges and said he believed that Sliwinski was trying to kill herself.
I once again send the families of the victims all my love, and all the strength i can spare.
I’m obsessed with the names people give things.
I don’t really know why, but it’s true nonetheless. We established this fairly early on in this site’s history, but it certainly hasn’t gotten less true over the intervening time.
And so, as I was idly looking through some album reviews today, my eye was drawn almost inevitably to the titles. And I started thinking to myself, “you know, some of these titles are awful” — at which point, a light went on in my head. “What are the worst titles people have given to their albums?” I thought, followed almost immediately by, “I should write that up for Superstarcastic.”
Compiling the list was pretty tough, actually. I had to leave off such venerable classics as the fourth Led Zeppelin album, Achtung Baby, and The Mars Volta’s De-Loused in the Comatorium, for instance, and I didn’t even have room for either of my (least) favorite titles from Helloween, Pink Bubbles Go Ape and Rabbit Don’t Come Easy. Given the depth of the competition and the sheer number of options, I could easily have inadvertently left something else off too — I’m sure most of you cyberspace music-obsessives have your own examples of atrociously-named albums, and I hope you share them in the comments; I don’t consider my list the last word on the subject by any stretch of the imagination, and I’d love to read your examples. But, to get things started, here’s what I came up with.
#10: Marillion, Anoraknophobia (2001)
Maybe it’s too easy to pick on a band that named itself after a J. R. R. Tolkien book and that spent most of its first decade of existence carting around a lead singer who called himself “Fish.” But there’s a sense in which Anoraknophobia distills into one “word” everything dislikeable about the dregs of the prog-rock movement: smug, self-satisfied cleverness that isn’t in the service of anything greater, and that doesn’t even have any self-relevance. After all, it’s not as if Anoraknophobia is a concept album about people who don’t like to wear winter coats (although Marillion are the sort of band whom I wouldn’t put it past to do something like that). It’s just a piece of meaningless wordplay that also served as the inspiration for some unpleasantly kitschy cover art.
#9: Soulwax, Most of the remixes we’ve made for other people over the years except for the one for Einstürzende Neubauten because we lost it and a few we didn’t think sounded good enough or just didn’t fit in length-wise, but including some that are hard to find because either people forgot about them or simply because they haven’t been released yet, a few we really love, one we think is just ok, some we did for free, some we did for money, some for ourselves without permission and some for friends as swaps but never on time and always at our studio in Ghent. (2007)
I couldn’t let this one go by without mentioning it, but I also can’t rate it any higher than this because it’s deliberately trying to make lists like this. As of this writing, this is now the longest title of any album ever released, and the paragraph of not-very-interesting prose that constitutes it is just an attempt to outdo Fiona Apple (more on her later) at her own game. It’s obnoxious and boring at the same time, a sort of calculated banality that’s just an excuse to try and get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Most of us were over that sort of thing by the end of junior high. But then again, if most of us had the chance to remix an Einstürzende Neubauten song, we wouldn’t freaking lose it.
#8. Sigur Rós, ( ) (2002)
Even though I’ll probably take some flak for it, I’ll be honest — I’ve never gotten into Sigur Rós, and I think it’s because they’re far too coy to really be good. I guess it makes sense to release an album like this with no track listing when you’ve made an entire career out of writing the same. exact. song. over and over again, but calling it ( ) when you could have called it Parentheses is the sort of art-school trick you pull when you’re more interested in designing the album cover than, you know, recording the album. And for the record, the album art is well executed, I guess, but it’s pretty bland. Kind of like the music it houses.
#7: Men Without Hats, The Adventures of Women and Men Without Hate in the 21st Century (1989)
This one’s easily my favorite album musically from this list, but the title is long, awkward, and makes it sound like the record’s going to contain nothing but, say, remixes of the Battlestar Galactica theme music. It’s an album that’s obsessed with themes of aging, and of time changing, but they could just as easily have called it In the 21st Century — which is the name of one of the songs, and which is also what everyone calls this album anyway — and saved themselves the trouble.
#6: Coheed and Cambria, Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Vol. 1: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness (2005)
I think the sub-Lovecraftian subtitle of this one (just a hair worse than the one attached to the band’s follow-up to this album, Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Vol. 2: No World for Tomorrow) is what vaults it into the upper echelons of bad-album-namedom. Additionally, while it’s admittedly easy to claim to be uninformed about the work of a band that has devoted its entire career to churning out different installments in the same conceptual science fiction soap opera, I have no idea what the not-particularly-grammatical main title is even supposed to mean. I think maybe it needs some more punctuation, because there’s a big difference between, say, “Good Apollo! I’m burning star!” and “Good, Apollo I’m burning, star,” although neither option is really that much of an improvement…
#5. (tie) Peter Gabriel, Peter Gabriel (1977); Peter Gabriel, Peter Gabriel (1978); Peter Gabriel, Peter Gabriel (1980)
He gives these albums these titles so you can tell them apart, you know.
#4. Pete Best, Best of the Beatles (1965)
Yes, it’s got to be disappointing to be Pete Best and have to live the rest of your life knowing that the band you got kicked out of became the biggest group in the history of recorded music. (At least Stu Sutcliffe a) left the band of his own accord and b) died before they became even moderately popular.) But even that’s no excuse for this album title, whose smarmy pun of a title is simply an excuse to try and bilk consumers who don’t read the packaging very closely. It’s hard to imagine a scam like this getting Pete very many new fans anyway, although I can very easily see him picking up some enemies.
#3. Limp Bizkit, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water (2000)
A puerile, clunky band deserves a puerile, clunky album title, I suppose. Somehow, this thing sold 13 million copies worldwide, which is probably enough for me to lose any remaining faith I might have had in humanity, and certainly enough for me to lose faith in humanity’s ability to effectively judge album titles.
#2. Happy Mondays, Squirrel & G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out) (1986)
There are plenty of conversations in music history that I wish I could have been present for, but one that ranks very highly on that list is the one that must have followed Tony Wilson asking, “So, Mr. Ryder, what are you planning on calling your first record?”
#1. Fiona Apple, When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He’ll Win the Whole Thing Fore He Enters the Ring There’s No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You’ll Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won’t Matter, Cuz You Know That You’re Right (1999)
Eight years after this record was first released, I’m not sure it’s possible to ever top this title. Consisting of a poem — a poem of such dubious literary merit that it’s hard for me to imagine anyone over the age of fourteen not being too embarrassed about it to let anyone read it — that was apparently supposed to be some kind of response to criticism of Apple’s work, its astounding silliness was magnified several times by the fact that Apple took not only the title but everything else about her career with a deadly seriousness usually reserved for nineteenth-century German philosophers. To call your album this represents a severe flaw in judgment; to call your album this and mean it is indicative of such a stunning lack of self-awareness that I’m not sure it’s likely to be equaled in my lifetime — and certainly not on a major label.
Perfection is rare. I would go so far as to say that perfection, in the very truest sense of the word, is impossible. Not just impossible, but also completely subjective on like 17.5 different levels. And it’s not even regular I-can’t-wrap-my-mind-around-it impossible. It’s also mathematically and scientifically impossible. However, because I’ve never really trusted math, science, or other people’s opinions, I’m not bound by their stupid laws of nature, or whatever. I can say, with conviction, that Ceremony’s Disappear is as close to perfect as I would ever dare call a record.
Seriously. It’s kind of a big deal.
I mentioned Ceremony briefly in my recent review of A Place to Bury Strangers, since the combined members of APTBS and Ceremony were once a band called Skywave, who were un-fucking-believable. When the members split and formed the two new bands, I was understandably excited because, you know, that would double my pleasure. Always a good thing.
And I was right. I was very pleased with APTBS’s recent self-titled release, which was incredibly solid. A few weeks later, the Ceremony record was released and also lived up to the high expectations I had for it, then exceeded said heighth by trekking into remote parts of outer space and orbiting distant moons and shit. It was light years past my already super high expectations, is what I’m saying.
The band is typically considered “shoegaze,” and certainly those elements are there, but the many other styles and atmospheres this band weaves into one cohesive album pretty much defy classification for me. Ceremony picks up where all of my old idols left off, somewhere in the mess of dark noise and electro; it’s music that could make you sulk or dance, or both simultaneously (a preferable combination). With the band’s unapologetically gloomy lyrics set to super amplified drum machines, black synth lines, and guitars turned up to 10, it’s the most fun you’ll ever have feeling sorry for yourself.
It’s impossible not to point out the band’s obvious influences, somewhere in the range of bands like the Cure, New Order, Love and Rockets, Sisters of Mercy, Chameleons, Gene Loves Jezebel and other similar mopey groups from a bygone era. You know, the bands that had the sense to turn up the synth AND the guitar and let the drum machine do it’s dark, dirty work. Those bands. Mix these elements with both Paul Baker’s and John Fedowitz’s (Ceremony has only two members; they share vocal duties) detached, my-heart-has been-broken-27-times vocals and you’ve got yourself one hell of a dark pop group.
Skywave’s residue is scant; perhaps the track “Heard You Call My Name” is the closest Ceremony gets to referencing them at all. Ceremony take a decidedly more electro route, but even still, they never truly leave their fuzzed out shoegaze sound behind either. “Never Love Again” has plenty of that warm My Bloody Valentine fuzz, but Baker’s and Fedowitz’s cold vocals take the song to a very different place. “Nothing Inside” is a straight up electropop track, but again, the song is anchored into a dark place with the band members’ voices and lyrics. The excellent “Cold Cold Night” is so reminiscent of Power, Corruption and Lies-era New Order that it makes me want to pull out that timeless record and spin it right now. I could go on, but do I really need to say more?
Ceremony’s music is a superb hybrid of dark noisy pop, shoegaze, and electro; the result is a sound both unique and nostalgic. The year isn’t quite over yet, but I can say without a doubt that this is my top release of the year.
Release date: October 15th, 2007
Label: Safranin Sound And Design Records
Rating: 9.6/10
I’ve been a fan of Soilwork for a good 2 and a half years now, having started my fandom with Stabbing The Drama, their penultimate release. I got really into their older stuff the more I listened to them. They’ve always had a distinct sound full of strong melody. They’re a band full of good stuff. Unfortunately, they just released a sub-par album. Sworn To A Great Divide is an album they should have left off their repertoire and saved up the potential for a release farther in the future.
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s bad dialogue. That goes for movies, plays, commercials, and yes, songs. If the lyrics are poorly written, I just can’t concentrate on anything else. Bjorn “Speed” Strid’s very apparent happiness in his life currently reflects in his trying-too-hard-to-be-mad lyrics. I HATE bad grammar. Call me idiotic, but even bad grammar in lyrics annoys me. Now, if some Southern lass is talking up a frenzied storm about the big county dance she’s going to, I expect some poorly situated words. That’s natural. However, songs like Martyr and their horribly dramatic “I don’t want nobody to hurt me, every time I see your face in the night, I know it’s all a voice in my head” moments just murder every attempt I make at actively listening to song craft.
Bjorn himself has let me down on this one too. He’s always been somewhat of a charismatic frontman, someone you enjoy listening to because of his versatility in going
from screams to sings. He’s pretty much a happy person, living life the way he wants to live it. With all of that being said, he sounds weak as hell on this album. Metal is a type of music that produces its own testosterone. A frontman that can manage that testosterone and channel it into angry, entertaining, and intense music has done his job. Bjorn shows a little too much of his lighter side on this album. If that’s what he wants to do, good for him. I have no problem with optimism and happiness and sing-songy vocals…the stuff just doesn’t belong in metal. You’d think that Bjorn Strid knows that, fronting a band that’s been a part of the Swedish Death Metal scene for over a decade. Almost all of Soilwork’s albums feature Strid’s crisp singing vocals, but on a much smaller scale. A majority of the songs get sing-y only in the choruses; choruses, I may mention, that vary in construct and are sometimes hard to pick out. He pisses his vocals away far too often on this album, sometimes hitting falsetto notes in the very apparent hooks.
The music isn’t too bad. It still has that Soilwork feel to it with those highly melodic yet crunching strums on basses and guitars that I faithfully know Soilwork to have. Many of the songs keep me interested based on the music alone. The chord progressions, however sometimes predictable, are good ones. The problem is that the songs no longer have that special songcraft they used to have. Past Soilwork classics like the beautifully synthesized As We Speak, the brutally melancholic and melodic Shadowchild, and the intense The Flameout kick the shit out of you at every turn, mixing Bjorn’s believable screams with occasional crisp singing and occasional guest grunters. The compositions on Sworn… lack that same intensity, that sneaking bite, that underlying layer of brute force and anger that Soilwork has had in the past. This fact, though, along with the poor lyrical construction of the songs, was predictable.
Metal Hammer, one of the best metal magazines in print, did a spread on Soilwork in last December’s issue. Amidst the talks of Bjorn’s happiness in life, the article highlighted the fact that a good part of Soilwork’s lineup has been changed. In 2005, Peter Wichers left the band because he was too damn tired of touring. That was a big one. Wichers was one of the founding members of the band as well as one of the key song-writers. There is one big hint right there. No more Wichers, no more probability of strong songs. That’s not to say that the seasoned professionals that are Bjorn Strid and Ola’s Fink and Frenning, the three strongholds of the band, don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve been a part of a strong metal flow for years out there in Swede-country. Unfortunately for them, a band that consistently puts out good music is a band whose members work in perfect harmony with each other. When a key song writer leaves a band, a noticeable hit is taken, no matter how good the remaining members are. This is the case with today’s Soilwork.
There are still some good songs on the album, though. One of my favorites, Sick Heart River, sounds like it actually comes from somewhere; it has drive behind it and a touch of passion; it doesn’t sound like it was put in the album for filler. The album’s third track, Breeding Thorns, regardless of having that catchy quality complete with hooks, stands out amongst the rest. The songs, even the weak ones, are still Soilwork’s, a band I still like. I’ll still listen to the album, but not as much as I will to their previous albums…not to mention the fact that I’ll probably skip around on this one, too.
Aside from still being somewhat pleasant to listen to, the songs on Sworn To A Great Divide are watered down and border-line radio-friendly. Going from Soilwork’s past credits to their current is like going from Newcastle to Bud Light. It’s all good and goes down smooth, but the prior has more kick than the latter.
Pop music is certainly no stranger to talented brothers. Right off the bat, the names The Everly Brothers and The Statler Brothers come to mind. Both were bands that used the kind of arrangements and harmonies found in traditional country and bluegrass music to craft a kind of earnest pop music that moved fans both young and old. After the release of their ninth full length studio album, Emotionalism, the Avett Brothers should be considered as part of that group of great pop music brothers.
The order of the day here, and in the majority of what I write elsewhere, is snark. The sharp tongue and the biting wit are a gift, especially when it comes to critique. But I cannot in good faith be snarky about this record. Emotionalism is quite simply one of the best records I have ever heard. It is at once strong and weak, angry and triumphant, desperate and hopeful. In a word, this record is love.
And that’s the point really. The newest record by Scott and Seth Avett, and upright bassist Bob Crawford, is maybe the most accurate document of the roller coaster ride that is passion and love and need since Leonard Cohen’s debut Songs of Leonard Cohen. And like that record by NYC’s favorite bard, Emotionalism will become, for many fans, the thing they turn to in the dark, when things have gone sour, and they need proof that they’re not the only person to have to go through what they’re going through. The newest record by the Avett Brothers isn’t just pop music, it’s pop music that can save lives.
There are songs like Shame, where the banjo haunts the melody from a place just on the periphery of sound, and the lyrics craft the picture of a man wrenched from the inside out by a decision he regrets, and the revelations he’s forced to make as a result of that decision.
Or The Weight of Lies, in which the songwriter lets us into the aftermath of those bad decisions, and explains that you can’t run from that aftermath. Eventually, despite how far you get away from the things that frighten or anger you, those things will track you down. It’s a lesson of life we all have to learn, and the song lets you know that you’re not alone in the learning.
But the real strength of this record, the song that will stand the test of time, like Sisters of Mercy from Songs of Leonard Cohen, is the Ballad of Love and Hate. An account of the relationship between Love and Hate, the song shows us a picture of base need, using the two emotions we’re most familiar with, and the two emotions that exist on two sides of a very thin line, to do so. By naming the characters Love and Hate, the Avetts are telling a tale of a relationship at its most reckless and it’s most hopeful. Love and Hate can’t exist without each other, and anyone who has ever been in a love so deep they could taste it on their lips and feel it in their bones knows exactly what this song is about, and will always be moved by it, regardless of how many times they hear it.
Emotionalism uses the same kind of stark soundscapes, simple chord arrangements, and earnest lyricism that have become the trademarks of the Avett Brothers recordings and live shows. The album dips and peaks, pulling at every emotion and memory in these expansive domes of ours, to create an accurate and moving picture of what it means to be human, and what it means to need. Seth Avett’s guitar, Scott Avett’s banjo, and Bob Crawford’s upright bass are no doubt strung with heartstrings, and each time they play them, they touch something inside us all.
Last night the cartoon nerdgasm that is Adult Swim’s Dethklok/…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead “Calligraphy Nightmare Logos of the Damned” tour bulldozed its way into Madison, Wisconsin’s Majestic Theater for a supposedly UW student-only event. Fortunately for me, a friend of mine secured a photo pass and +1 spot for a local publication she writes for, and thus, my ownership of a car turned me into her +1. A winner is me, and thus, i found myself in the Majestic’s picturesque confines for what was certainly an explosion of heavy metal nerdery not seen since the release of Beowulf.
I’m not sure that i have much to say about the actual Dethklok performance other than to say that it’s exactly what any fan of Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse could hope for: series creator Brendon Small leads a real-life metal band that performs signature ‘klok anthems like “Go Forth and Die,” “Thunderhorse” and “Mermaidur” while a video screen above the band plays synced-up videos for each song while connecting the entire set with between-song skits involving bathroom breaks and the like. The songs absolutely crushed, the band absolutely killed, the fans absolutely swayed and moshed.
But what i’m honestly more interested in writing about is the opening act, Austin, TX epic-rock vets the Trail of Dead. Read more »
