Back, due to no demand at all. "The new low in music criticism" (trademark pending). You can be brief. You can be brutal. But can you cut the mustard when there's only 60 seconds on the clock and you've never listened to the album before?
Kittie - In The Black
Never realised before that listening to Soundgarden gave me a hard-on. Rock that rocks yet somehow fails to rock. Weird. Maybe it's the ridiculous "digital horses galloping over the hill" drum sound. Maybe it's the sheer bullying mundanity of the made-to-measure guitar riffs.
El Perro Del Mar - Love Is Not Pop
Everything soothes. Love is not pop, argues the Swedish songstress succinctly - and indeed, love is not pop. Pop is not love. Guitars are not guitars. Echoes do not echo. Tinkling gentle background chimes are not wind chimes are not a substitute for a big meaty phat bass sound. Guns for love, I say. Guns for love.
Panther - Entropy
More saturation. More piano. More American bands who've listened to the same bloody three Beach Boys albums as Animal Collective. More boy vocals sung like they've been muffled by beards and woolly cardigans. This is the music your eccentric uncle Jack railed against. (Apologies to Panther if they're not American.)
The Very Best - Warm Heart Of Africa
Features a dude from Vampire Weekend, a lady called M.I.A. and some dude from Africa. Sounds precisely like you'd expect. That's 25 seconds of my life irretrievably wasted, never to return.
Woah, Kittie still exists! They were huge among the rainbow goths at my high school. Looks like they haven't changed a bit.
ReplyDeleteET,
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure THE VERY BEST is the band and that Warm Heart of Africa is the title.
just in case you change your mind and would like to google more...
beSt
Thanks Slobodan. I'll amend the text now.
ReplyDelete(From Facebook)
ReplyDeleteDan Cross
Cool idea.
Yesterday at 10:14 · Delete
(From Facebook)
ReplyDeleteFrances Morgan
Everett, I have a question - with these 60-second reviews, do you only get to listen to 60 seconds of the album/single, while you're writing the review, or do you listen to the whole thing and then write the review in 60 seconds?
Tues at 21:05 · Delete
Everett True
um. strictly, the idea is that I only listen to 60 seconds. but in practice, normally I'm writing about something that's been knocking around for a few days so I've probably heard a little bit of it already. I try and avoid reading any press releases that come with them, if poss.
The ones above, I think the maximum I listened to any of them was 2.31 mins. I'm aware (obviously) that this might lead to me making snap judgments I later disagree with. However, as I also have long contended that it's usually possible to tell whether you're going to like an album within the first 10 seconds, I'm not too worried about that.
But - of course - maybe that's more a reflection of the sort of music I like to listen to. Dub and 60s rocksteady and lovers rock, right now.
Tues at 21:14 · Delete
Frances Morgan
Obviously the point of the exercise is the snap judgement, or snapshot, or however you want to call it - just wondered how you were doing it.
Tues at 21:35 · Delete
Everett True
yeah, snapshot. I'm trying to be very strict with myself. main trouble is that - obviously - there's no proof. You have to take my word for it that it's taking me 60 seconds to write the reviews (I do a tiny bit of tidying up after).
Tues at 21:39 · Delete