Snap Judgements

Time to do some quick record reviewing. I'll use this as an opportunity to say how much I love MySpace Music. Their collection is amazing, and being able to stream entire albums before they come out makes me feel much more law-abiding. It's a wonder the music industry didn't start this years ago. Like, when Napster came out.

Anyhoo, let's get down to it:

Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak

Yeezy gets down to his emotional side. After a year in which his mother died and he split with his fiance, he was feeling some pain, and this is the result. Whatever one thinks of Kanye West, he's anything but conventional.

The album's an intriguing mess. In the event you live in a box and don't know, there's no rapping here, no samples, and barely more than a few instruments per song. The result is a cold, methodical, haunting sound that doesn't change enough to be truly great. A few of the tracks, including the initial singles "Love Lockdown" and "Heartless," really swell up and attach themselves to you, whether you like it or not. But on a whole, the album's a bit one-note, repetitive and uncompromising in its bleak outlook. It's nothing great, but it's still something special.

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The Killers - Day And Age

The Killers are a band made for the modern era but desperate to have been from the '70s. That is to say, they make great singles, but ultimately would rather make great albums. The problem is, they're painfully unaware that they're incapable of this.

Hot Fuss featured classic songs "Mr. Brightside," "All These Things That I've Done," and "Smile Like You Mean It." The album sucked. Sam's Town featured classic songs "When You Were Young," "Read My Mind," and "This River Is Wild." The album sucked.

This one features a few solid tracks, particularly "Losing Touch," the album opener and high point. It's a soaring rock track that belongs right up there with the aforementioned songs, but the rest of the album can't live up. Maybe one of these days they'll get that cohesively great album that lives up to the potential of their singles, but I can't help feeling they won't achieve that until they stop trying to.

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Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy

If Kanye's new album was a rushed, small, introspective album, this is the opposite. It took nearly two decades, and it's bombastic as hell. But it's just as much if not more of a mess.

Then again, I'm not the world's biggest GNR fan, so the most I can say is that there's nothing here I see myself listening to in a year or two, no classic songs on the level of "Sweet Child O' Mine," but it's not particularly bad. It just doesn't stand out at all. For any other album, that'd be just fine. For this one, I'm left thinking "we waited fifteen years for this?" Sorry, Chuck Klosterman, I just don't get it.

Amazing

Bruce Lee playing ping pong with nunchucks.

There are no words.

The Wrestler - Hell Yestler

I am SO excited for The Wrestler. Darren Aronofsky's a director who's missed once for me (Pi), hit big once (Requiem for a Dream), and fell somewhere in between a third time (The Fountain).

But this seems like the perfect fit for me. A down-to-earth, normal, human story with no sci/fi or drugs or insanity involved.

Plus, it's got an original song by Bruce. Instant awesomeness cred.

Movie Release Insanity

Usually by this point in the year, a number of movies have come out that are at the least hyped (pre-release) as Oscar contenders. Lost in Translation, No Country For Old Men, Little Miss Sunshine, and countless movies that competed for but didn't recieve Oscar noms were released by October. That's when Oscar season is supposed to start.

But not this year.

Here are the Oscar-bait movies still to be released, or only just recently starting their limited releases:

Slumdog Millionaire
Australia
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
The Wrestler
Rachel Getting Married
Synecdoche, NY
Milk
The Road
Revolutionary Road
Doubt

I mean, as far as movies released before November go, the only real potential Best Picture nominee seems to be The Dark Knight (which I'd admittedly love to see). That's strange. 6 weeks to cram in at least 11 Best Picture contenders (you can knock Syncechdoche, NY off that list, though). Highly unusual, and it'll make for an expensive next month or so.

Here We Go, Here We Go Again

I'm giving it yet another shot. SMBL returns. Random musings of whatever the hell I want to write from here on out. It might be politics, because Barack Obama is So Much Better Live. It might be sports, because NBA Basketball is So Much Better Live. It might be movies, because...uhh...seeing movies in the theatre...LIVE...instead of on DVD...is So Much Better Live.

But it'll still be mostly music. Lots of individual songs, videos, reviews, etc. I hope, anyway.

So here's one from my fun last weekend: it's Maritime, with "Young Alumni."

Download: Maritime - Young Alumni

The album's a bit one-note for me, which is to say I haven't listened to it enough for the tracks to really stand out from each other, but this song does every time. Such a great, zippy-chill guitar riff, the kind of song you want to bob your head to in a coffee shop. The band actually reminds me a lot of a less-quirky Belle and Sebastian, or even moreso of Minus The Bear. Enjoy.