Infinity (& Insincerity) On High

6.5/10

“I’m all right in bed, but I’m better with a pen”, Pete Wentz has never been one to shy away from self-aggrandizement, which is a bit welcome in his field. Being an emo poster boy is tough; all of the spiky insecurities and floppy hair, for these guys love really is a battlefield. The problem with Infinity on High and Fall Out Boy in general is that there’s always been just a bit too much caustic wit and confidence mixed with a sort of trademark sarcasm that has been all too lacking from popular music, basically they don’t fit the emo/punk mold. Patrick Stump sings a bit too well and doesn’t whine into the microphone, the music doesn’t seem as amateurish and uncouth and though the lyrics might bemoan teenage broken hearts and angst, the next line almost always leads to a snotty kick in the ass come-back that feels like it should have been used in your last nasty break-up.



About 10 seconds into the song “Thriller” you’re bound to think to yourself, “is that who I think it is?” and the answer is yes, Jay-Z is giving the boys in the band a big up intro in the form of a thank you to their loyal fans that have stuck around since the beginning as well as giving the critics a once over for what they said would “never happen”, frankly this all sounds a little silly until the guitars open up with a fairly metal influenced salvo that gets the album moving quickly, and the song progresses as a success story of the bands rise to super-star status. “Thriller” sounds like a conventional Fall Out Boy song but moves into “The Take Over, The Break’s Over” which sounds like it could and would have been written by Franz Ferdinand before moving exuberantly into a giant chorus and then back into the wiry new-wave. The desire to be “taken seriously” runs rampant through out this album but it becomes difficult to definitively say that it hurts or helps it. The presence of a piano ballad seems forced but it doesn’t play badly with the production and Stump’s voice makes it work because he isn’t plaintively crying at the microphone. Moreover the first single “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race” is just plain weird, it’s quite literally an R&B punk song and it seems like it’s going to fall flat up until it gets to the refrain that assuages a bit of the worry of how the band is straying a bit too far from the formula, but of course a formula was never the band’s friend to begin with.

The album has a sort of oscillating feel to it, alternating between the songs that you know will become fan favorites and the ones that will probably appeal to the people who don’t usually listen to four guys who wear girl jeans. The odd thing about it is that it’s close to losing its spark at quite a few moments and consequently a lot of these songs may be skipped over in subsequent listens, but taken together it’s ambitious and still sounds like the Fall Out Boy you fell in love with on your last car ride with your friends.



I tried to promise myself I wouldn’t include a list of my favorite tracks from this album after the main review but I’ll make a confession that I really like Fall Out Boy and I kind of wish I could have rated this album higher, but it just didn’t meet up with what I had in mind, so I thought I’d give what I thought was the ideal track listing.


1. Thriller
2. The Take Over, The Break’s Over
3. I’m Like A Lawyer With The Way I’m Always Trying To Get You Off (You & Me)
4. Hum Hallelujah
5. Don’t You Know Who I Think I Am
6. The Carpal Tunnel Of Love
7. Bang The Doldrums
8. Fame < Infamy
9. I’ve Got All This Ringing In My Ears And None On My Fingers

The Shins - Wincing the Night Away

8/10

In terms of bands that defy explanation and classification the Shins are a band that play a wistful brand of pop music intermingled with left-field experimentation that allows them to hold on to their self-aware indie credentials at the same time. However they are now the formerly small band that now has a much larger audience due in large part to what seemed an incidental PR engine that advertised them to everyone from children to romantically challenged twenty-something fans of the film Garden State.



One has to think that the ramifications of that kind of notoriety would weigh on an artist and had to have figured into the making of Wincing the Night Away, but in this instance unlike so many others the effects feel less explicit than implicit. On Wincing the Night Away the Shins come across not making the timorous follow-up to a genre landmark like Chutes Too Narrow but rather meeting the expectations with the same wide-eyed panache that they have always possessed. This isn't all that surprising, the Shins have always sounded sonically gifted, if a bit odd, what is surprsing is the way that songwriter James Mercer has handled this album. The songs bound between advances in the bands sound and returns to the touchstones they've created. The lead track Sleeping Lessons begins with a vibraphone and Mercer's distorted vocals, it is immediately the most forward looking and most self referential track all at once, as the song builds into an exuberant jaunt that recalls the Shins of records past. The band pulls this trick again and again avoiding jumping the shark by consistently calling to mind their own familiar style but never retreating into it, while exploring new ground and pushing the boundaries around them. While the music is by far some of their best, the lyrics find Mercer using more and more oblique poetry to communicate, the most notable instance of this is on the song Red Rabbits where he sings "Into the crucible to be rendered an emulsion". It's difficult to interpret such a complex artifice of wordplay especially when it's placed in the context it is. This is not necessarily the case across all of the album as Australia has some of the more memorable lyrics in recent memory, "Faced with the dodo's conundrum / I felt like I could just fly / but nothing happened everytime I tried." In perspective, the lyrics seem forced in some sections but taken together with the genuinely memorable moments rarely hurt the atmosphere or the arrangements significantly. Given that the Shins appear to have recorded three excellent albums in a row, which is quite difficult for any band to do, I don't believe this band will be facing the aforementioned conundrum anytime soon.

Strokes Guitarist Goes Solo

7/10
It’s the oldest trick in the book. Unassuming and spectacularly afro’d guitarist for a well known band with a diehard fan base goes off and works on his own project and makes his famous songwriter dad very pleased. Omar Rodriguez Lopez did it, minus the famous songwriter father. I am an admittedly big fan of the Strokes, I own all of the albums, yet I was also greatly disappointed by the latest release. I felt that there was a large gap in that album that needed to be filled in. Enter Yours To Keep. Albert Hammond Jr. constructs an entire album of sunny-side up pop tunes that help to make up for what the Strokes have seemed to lack of late.

The opening song “Cartoon Music for Superheroes” is an exercise in beach boys harmony and toy instruments while the guitars on “In Transit” recall “Automatic Stop” from Room on Fire. The songs contain a sort of nervous electricity and ennui that haunts the happy hollow edges of the melodies, but ultimately nothing ever becomes top heavy or too dark. The melodies take a strong precedence over anything else. The major surprise of this album by far is Albert’s voice. Coming in to this album my expectations were almost nill, quite honestly I wouldn’t have been surprised by an entirely instrumental album, but the voice that he finds on this record is warm and tender and plays across the notes well alongside the toy pianos, acoustic guitars and banjos which is the biggest advance. Albert maintains a much more expansive sonic palette than his mates and even trots out a horn section for the closing number on the record. This is a great album while not necessarily daring but with songs this likeable it doesn’t really matter if you think you’ve heard it before, that just means you already know you’ll like it.

New Year, New Best Of!

With a new year comes a lot of new opportunities, and this one I think will be a bit of fun. I’m starting this blog with the (semi) professional critic in mind. The parenthetical addition around the prefix semi is meant to refer to those who aren’t paid to be critics but are regardless. I had wanted to start a music focused website for some time now and decided that not only was now the time for this but that I would start it all off with a list of the albums that I found interesting and worthwhile this year. I won’t burden you with a long list, it’s only five items, and frankly that’s all I had time for this year anyway, but with no further ado, here’s the list.

Underoath - Define The Great Line:

This album is possibly the best thing that happened to Christianity in a couple hundred years. I am not a religious individual myself but I think that these guys capture the conflict between idealism and the truth of being human. This is heavy music that appeals to the faithful and the super-pierced warped tour crowd all at once. The band chug and swoon behind Spencer Chamberlain as his impressive caterwaul bounces between a high end wail and a low primal growl. This album is powerful and meaningful. Very highly recommended.

Copeland - Eat, Sleep, Repeat:

When a band sneaks up on you out of nowhere, especially when so many other bands were falling short of their own very high expectations it's a very satisfying experience. Copeland make something akin to a blend of Radiohead and Elliott Smith. Aaron Marsh has a voice that coos and keens in equal measure, but the joy of this band is in the quiet confidence it radiates. The song "Control Freak" especially is a demonstration in the hooky chops that you can expect in almost all of the songs on the album, though they're sometimes buried by wacky experimentation, this is never to the detriment of the album however, and the record comes out a cohesive and sublime whole.

the Roots - Game Theory:

the Roots are the most important presence in hip-hop, and I don't care who knows it. Kanye's too arrogant, but honestly if Common had released a new album this year I might have had a difficult time deciding which was better. The point is this album is excellent. The music combines the nervy study in musicianship that ?uestlove and company have mastered by this point, and Black Thought observes and destroys with rhymes about war, politics, and personal demons all in the same album. Few artists in any genre are even willing to cover that kind of a gamut and most of them shouldn't as the results are usually less than stellar, but these guys pull it off with polish and punch.

Taking Back Sunday - Louder Now:

The TBS emo die-hards won't like this but Where You Want To Be was a great album. It was the album that Tell All Your Friends wanted to be. I loved Tell All Your Friends don't get me wrong, but having come to this band nearly backwards, I heard Tell All Your Friends after Where You Want to Be, and the improvements were immense. That being said, Louder Now takes the progression further and makes TBS a commercially viable band that still maintains its own personality and allure. My Chemical Romance did a very similar thing a few years ago but were still the most annoying band in music with the make-up and songs that were trying desperately to find any identity they could. Taking Back Sunday now fully benefits from Fred Mascherino and his ability to craft powerful songs and complement Adam Lazarra's pained wail with the assured clear-headed voice needed to keep the lyrics interesting. This album would have had higher position if I hadn't felt the album was hurt by song selection. The B-sides Brooklyn and Sleep were good enough to not only be on this album but to take the place of a couple of cuts.

Sparta - Threes:

This is another band whose first album I thought was not their best work. Wiretap Scars showed potential but never fully capitalized on the promises. Threes is a great album that plays up the melody and molds Jim Wards vocals into a wholly satisfying experience. On the first two albums Ward seemed to be trying too hard and has finally reached a point where he can sing the lovely introspective parts alongside the elaborate emotional anthemic parts. I have to say that the band seems to be benefitting from line-up changes in the form of Keely Davis. The guitar parts are bigger better and the melodies are getting top billing in this outing which is a pleasant surprise since Wiretap Scars seemed to be cribbing At The Drive-In's notes a bit too much.

Well that's that. I hope you all enjoy this hastily produced and rather short best of list. If anybody out there actually reads this, feel free to suggest albums you think I missed, or even criticize the ones that I listed.

"Still Living in the one coastal Florida city that has more sharks on the land than in the water."