CD Reviews: The Loved Ones, Horrorpops, and Tim Armstrong

Some thoughts on recently purchased CDs:

The Loved Ones - Build & Burn

After listening to The Loved Ones new cd, Build & Burn, I missed the intense drive of Keep Your Heart which begins with pounding drums and an energy-filled yell. I think it's safe to say that The Loved Ones grew up ... at least a little.

On some level this is disappointing since I credit The Loved Ones and their song "Jane" to re-awakening my love of cheesy pop-punk and, in many ways, re-awakening myself. Nonetheless, after a few listens, I have come to really enjoy Build & Burn - and get its songs stuck in my head.

Despite the decrease in intensity, Build & Burn offers all the catchy-ness of Keep Your Heart. "Louisiana", a song about rebuilding New Orleans, is the first song that stuck in my head. It's gospel-esque repetition seems fitting for the subject and pulled me in immediately. After my obsessive singing of Louisiana, the next song to catch me was "Pretty Good Year". The catalyst for my love of this song, I believe, is the very good lyric: I'm reinventing happiness again. Amen.


The Horrorpops - Kiss Kiss Kill Kill

My first impression of The Horrorpops third album, Kiss Kiss Kill Kill, was that it was the link between The Horrorpop's more rockabilly and psychobilly first album, Hell Yeah, and their pop-punk influenced second album, Bring It On!: a little harder and more rockabilly than Bring It On! and more pop-punk-esque than Hell Yeah.

Like Build & Burn from The Loved Ones, I thought that Kiss Kiss Kill Kill lacked the drive of their previous album, Bring It On! After seeing them live, I realized that part of this was the use of one guitarist as a opposed to two. Especially live, some of the songs fell a little flat without another guitarist.

Regardless, this is a rocking album ... surely far more rock 'n roll than any of the popular punk bands out there. Patricia's voice, as usual, has the perfect tone, scratchiness, and volume for the music. I think she has one of the best rock n roll voices out their today.

Truthfully, my biggest beef with the album is some of the lyrics. For example, the second song on the album, "MissFit," has the line:

And I'm, I'm from the wrong side of town,
Now frown,
On top of that I'm female.

While I love and appreciate the sentiment of the lyric - the intersection of class and gender and the double prejudice that comes with it - I find that the word "female" stands out every time I hear it - and not in a good way. It's like reading a book and finding yourself correcting grammar and awkward sentences: distracting, to say the least.

This isn't an isolated incident either. There's the song "Copenhagen Refugee." Again, I relate to the theme of best friendships falling apart when one person moves forward in their life, even if it's in a direction that both desired. But, come on. Copenhagen Refugee?? That has to be one of the most 15-year-old-I-just-learned-about-punk-lame lyrics ever. Sorry but it's true.

However, the more I listen to the album the more I'm able to let the obnoxious lyrics go and enjoy the power of the music and appreciate the theme of the songs. Despite my bitchy, obsessive, nit-pickiness, I would definitely recommend this record.


Tim Armstrong - A Poet's Life


It seems that more and more I find myself having "God I'm old" moments. Often these occur when I find out about a band or album way after it's come out. Discovering that Tim Armstrong had put out a solo album was one of those moments.

In my own defense (and in an attempt to make myself feel better), I haven't bought a Rancid album in years and I haven't really been into one since ...And Out Come the Wolves. Everything since then has just seemed like the same old, same old.

This made me pretty excited that Tim was doing something new. Apparently, he started making songs available to download for free while fans waited for the new Rancid album. Fans responded so positively to the songs, especially "No Action", that he decided to release the songs as a solo album.

The album, A Poet's Life, is like a reggae version of Operation Ivy. Tim's husky, smoker's voice lends a rock n roll-ness to the reggae music. Combined with female vocals on "No Action," it stands heads above the other songs.

A Poet's Life didn't knock my socks off but it is the perfect album far chilling (preferably with a cold beer) after a long, grueling day.

Who hearts Pink? I heart Pink!

I believe Pink has been listening to a lot of Freddie Mercury lately. There are certain moments in her new album, I'm Not Dead, that caused me to furrow my brow and rewind in case I'd heard wrong. First, it was the chorus to the title track, I'm Not Dead: "I'm not dead just floating." The punctuated, tentative high pitch of the delivery screamed Freddie Mercury to me but then I thought maybe I was just crazy. On comes "'Cuz I Can" with high pitched faux-Classical style backing vocals that include "Ice Cream Ice Cream We All Want Ice Cream" and "Ruff Ruff Ruff" (which was preceded by the line "I'm trying to school you dog." Now I know I'm not crazy ... and I know I freakin' ♥heart♥ Pink.

My love of Pink is not new it's true but I really thought I had gotten over it. I came reluctantly to Mizunderstood. At the time I saw Pink as another R&B Britney wanna-be ... with cooler hair. But the more I learned about her - the fact that she actually skateboarded - and the more songs that came off Mizunderstood, the more I was hooked. It's catchy shit y'all ... and more importantly, the lyrics had a sense of integrity that no one was getting from Britney or Christina or Jessica Simpson. "Everyday I fight a war against the mirror" - hello? what teenager girl hasn't?

Then Pink came out with Try This - which was partially produced and written by none other than Mr. Hot Influential Punk Rocker with a Chipped Tooth, Tim Armstrong. I could hear the Tim Armstrong influence in the ska guitar strums on "Last to Know" and the rock beat (and rockness) on many of the other songs. That really solidified things for me. Pink freakin' knew who Tim Armstrong was! And wanted to work with him! (Something tells me that Baby Face - owner of her record label - wasn't standing in line to work with Tim Armstrong.) Plus she was dating MotoCrosser Carrie Hart. All this added up to cool in my book. And I got myself and many a friend through break ups with "Walk Away."

But then Pink disappeared and aside from the occasional listen to "Walk Away" on Break-Up mixes I'd made for others , I didn't really notice. At one point, I think I saw the video for her first single off I'm Not Dead, "Stupid Girls," and heard the first booty shaking beats and thought "ugg." Then I saw a live performance of "Dear Mr. President" on Fuse and it was amazing. "What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away?" Who hasn't asked that question? (Besides Dubya of course) However, the straw that broke the camel's back was, while standing in line at the grocery store, hearing a familiar catchy song ("Who Knew") and realizing that Pink was singing it. That was it. Three strikes, I'm hooked so I bought the record off iTunes.

The first thing I noticed when the songs downloaded was that "Dear Mr. President" featured the Indigo Girls. The Indigo Girls. How amazingly awesome is that? In fact, on Pink's Official MySpace page she lists the Indigo Girls as an influence ... as well as Bad Religion!

I accidentally had my iPod on shuffle for my first listen to I'm Not Dead and the first song to come on was "I Have Seen the Rain" featuring none other than her father! She introduces the song by saying her father brought it back from Vietnam and it was the first song she learned how to sing and harmonize with. See? Awesome.

I gave "Stupid Girls" another try too and it surprised me. It's beat is booty-shakingly catchy - which I can handle some of the time - but it's the lyrics that were so pleasantly unexpected. It half parodizes the Paris Hilton-esque female celebrity ("They travel in packs of two or three with their itsy bitsy doggies and teeny weeny tees") and expresses a desire for something better ("Outcasts and girls with ambition that's what I want to see.") And the video is hilarious! Seriously, though, it gives me hope to see celebrities - especially celebrities who are speaking directly to young girls - expressing their political beliefs in general and these particular beliefs.

Mostly, I give Pink a lot of credit for honestly expressing relationship issues from a female perspective. Too often us ladies are the spoken too not speaking. A while ago I had a conversation with a friend and it turned to the politics of our relationships with liberal (and awesome) guys. She related an incident in which they went out to a club and her guy pointed out a girl dressed to the nines. He said he hated girls like that because they never talked to him. She looked at him quizzically, "She's just here to have a good time with her friends." Perhaps Pink says it best in her song "U + Ur Hand:"

I'm not here for your entertainment
You don't really want to mess with me tonight
Just stop and take a second
I was fine before you walked into my life
Cause you know it's over
Before it began
Keep your drink just give me the money
It's just you and your hand tonight

Amen to that.

After listening to the whole album I really felt a kinship with Pink. I wanted to go out and have a drink with her ... even though I'm pretty sure that she could drink me under the table.* So who ♥hearts♥ Pink? Me!



*Note: This is not a good litmus test for electing a president ...

more pitchfork + bad religion

i admit it. i was spurred to search pitchfork for bad religion reviews after hearing that a friend's hipsterific brother stopped liking bad religion after pitchfork called their lyrics 'politics for seventh graders.' (let's not even get into the fact that this person blindly follows pitchfork ...) the previous post on their review of los angeles is burning was just my first foray.

next in google's "more from pitchforkmedia.com" is:

the process of belief:

well i respect them for not dissing too hard on br; on refusing to give their readers what they want: "You want to see your friendly neighborhood elitist thoroughly skewering a band long past its prime." (what does that say about their readers? only 28 year olds in girls jeans one size too small plastered on by the modern marvel of spandex can make good music?) at least, they are mildly aware of the roots of the shitty hipster indie rock crap they listen to.

but it's statements like these that i really don't understand: "Obvious pleas for radio play, like the mid-tempo and acoustic-flavored "Broken," make you feel a little sorry for the band and their memories of brief mid-nineties alt-rock stardom (sing it: "You and me-ee/ Have a disea-ease!")"

let's review something here ...

the highest a bad religion song ever charted on the us modern rock charts (never hot 100) was 11 ... and it was 21st Century Digital Boy not Infected. (Infected only got to 27). That was over 10 years ago. Somehow I don't think a band that has been around since 1980, that seems to be doing quite well financially, and in which most members have kids and other jobs is really looking for that #1 in celebrity magazine hit. I guess it's just me but maybe, just maybe, they, as Jay Bentley says in their latest dvd, "want what they have." Bad Religion makes good money off their music ... what else can a punk rock band ask for? Personally Bad Religion with their just under the radar record sales in the hundreds of thousands (250,000 to 800,000) is something to aspire to. Plus I look like an ice cream cone in skinny jeans.


Don't get me wrong I don't think Process of Belief is their best album and yes, Bad Religion can do wrong. I just don't trust the self-proclaimed "elitist" who consistently lists animal collective under best new music.


~ * ~ * ~

ah-ha! found it! the impetus for the search!

"Therefore, I think discovering Bad Religion and their Chomsky for Dummies rhetoric is an important experience for a youth in his/her formative musical years. Sure, their politics are a little flimsy and idealistic (the line "when all soldiers lay their weapons down" would make even a 1967 Haight-Ashbury drum circle queasy), but Graffin's lyrics at least can plant questions in a seventh grader's brain more profound than whether that girl in study hall likes him. And it's all delivered in the kind of sugar-high sonic package that speaks most directly to the age range in question."

I can barely begin here. Are you saying that adults who like bad religion are intellectually immature? That punk rock is only for kids (kind of like trix)? Bad Religion has the largest age range of fans of any band i know.

And Chomsky for Dummies? Flimsy and idealistic? Here they call it "thesaurus rock."

Have they ever actually written a song? Have they ever tried to use "transubstantiation" in a lyric?

The truth is that pitchfork media exemplifies the old adage that those who do do and those who can't teach ... or in this case, review. Now I don't believe that of teachers but I definitely believe it of critics and reviewers of all kinds.

More importantly, we forget that songs are not dissertations (which Greg Graffin has successfully completed for his Ph.fucking.D). They are short and rhymed and there is no way that a song could ever capture the nuance of life, especially politics. Songs are a moment of thought and feeling and shouldn't be held to the standard of say, Chomsky's books. And if you read Greg Graffin's books and articles you will find a very well-read, intellectual, solid mind. More importantly, why don't you try to fit a Chomsky book into 2 minutes of verse/chorus/verse? oh right, because you can't even strum an E chord.

once upon a time pitchfork media reviewed los angeles is burning ....

Read the article here.

"The irony of it all is that the band's call-and-response vocal arrangements are straight out of a Baptist church house, as are the rich harmonies and the reliance on one man-- in this case, Graffin-- to testify to (and for) the congregation. Bad Religion's magic doesn't stem as much from their political lyrics as from the airtight arrangements and thick, sweet harmonies that bring the lyrics to you, and interestingly, are also the antithesis of the social rebellion the band advocates. A case could be made (and sometimes I make it) that the band resorts to the very things it deplores in order to get across a message, and that in the process, they demand a kind of allegiance that a cynic might call unhealthy. But if Graffin and Gurewitz are willing to return to the well to help the innocent climb out, the end certainly justifies the means. "

Um, what?

Just because they use musical techniques developed in a church (which ps - everyone does because that's how music developed) doesn't mean they "resort to the very things [they] deplore"? I don't even understand what they are talking about? You can't have airtight arrangements and harmonies if you are an indie band or advocate for a social rebellion? The formualic songs written by record company execs in no way resemble Bad Religion. Pop music isn't evil in itself. I mean who doesn't like the Beatles? Have you heard the Ramones? Have you listened to Buddy Holly at a really fast speed … oh wait, that IS the Ramones.

Punk rock and social rebellion are about creating the world you live in and not just going along with the corporate, powerful, self-serving way. That does NOT mean doing something just because it's against authority. It means thinking about the actions that you take, the way you vote, the things you say. Sometimes those things may be in line with "authority;" sometimes not. The key thing is that it involes thinking and thoughfully doing things your way. And that's exactly what Bad Religion does and has done for 18(?) years.

Perhaps ironically, blink 182 said it best: (I'm paraphrasing here) a kid who won't listen to anything because it's on the radio is just as bad as a kid who will only listen to something because it's on the radio.