Sawtooth says:
As for the characterization that this song is inspired by bluegrass music, I just don’t see it. It reminds me more of the Irish folk-punk of bands like The Pogues, but maybe I’m just pulling a “no true Scotsman” argument since it’s a quartet of Brits imitating American folk music. A good track nonetheless. I especially like the four-part harmonies that pop up in the chorus.

TheDramaticMonarch says:
If the wild, wild west and Spirit of the West ever had a secret steamy love affair, “Little Lion Man” would be that love child. The opening acoustic guitar feels like it should be at home in a long lost John Wayne flick set in the Grand Canyon yet the chorus suggests it should be screamed out by bawdy (if a little remorseful) hooligans in a Maritime pub. For placing the ridiculously silly mental image of a grizzled, near-toothless old prospector doing a merry jig on top of a pile of beer kegs inside my head, this song easily gets a free pass from me.

ThornBrain says:
A brisk, British folk take on Americana that works on nearly every level. Mumford himself supplies the proper earnestness while the “sons” provide apt harmony and instrumentation, plus unobtrusive banjo; thumbs up just for mixing that into the music effectively. While the chorus line “I really fucked it up this time, didn’t I my dear?” reminds me why subtlety is usually the better direction to go with your music, [particularly in today’s imagination-free musical climate], if anything it actually makes me want to check out those Waterboys my dad was always talking about.

•

• “Imma Be” by The Black Eyed Peas
Sci-fi combines with booming club beats on this twitchy, robotic pop hip-hop song.

Sawtooth says:
Can’t like them all, of course. And I certainly don’t like this track one bit. As far as I’m concerned it’s the 2010 equivalent of BEP’s other famous earworm, “My Humps.” (With a jarring tempo change added on for the hell of it.) This song only further proves true my opinions that will.i.am is a terrible rapper, the other two Peas that aren’t Fergie and Mr. i.am might as well not exist.

TheDramaticMonarch says:
Ladies and gentlemen, the Black Eyed Peas have just patented the Aural Lobotomy. It’s called “Imma Be”. This may have very well been the longest four and a half minutes I have ever been subjected to. If the relentless repetition of the song’s title didn’t fry your brain, trying to wrap it around the inanest-of-the-inane lyrics (and considering that this is the same group responsible for “My Humps”, that’s saying a lot) will only cause a mental implosion. There’s only so much meaningless drivel about fame, nightclubs, champagne and semen (d-did I really just type that in?!) a sane person can comprehend. Let’s move onto the next song ASAP before my thought meats become ground beef. Pretty please?

ThornBrain says:
Are you fucking kidding me? You actually made something dumber and less-listenable than “Telephone”? I’d say that takes skill, but then I’d have to hang myself.

•

• “Fuck You” by Cee-Lo
An anonymous gold-digger gets a harsh rebuke from the twisted mind of one half of Gnarls Barkley.

Sawtooth says:
Leaving aside all the numerous unfunny internet parodies and all the negative meme points, this is a damn good song, and yet another throwback to the bygone era of Motown. What I’ve always liked about Cee-Lo as an artist is his sense of humor, IE: The sniveling mock-sadness he displays in the breakdown. Hilarious stuff.

TheDramaticMonarch says:
Between this and “Tight Rope”, there must have been some kind of memo going around the music industry to channel the spirits of Motown in 2010. God bless ‘em for it because this song never fails to get a big silly smile out of me. The sanitized radio (and “Glee”) friendly version called “Forget You” just simply doesn’t have the same effect. Pissy petty inner rage just can’t be tamed, especially with such deliciously foul-mouthed lines sung with the utmost sincerity by those harmonious backup singers. (“Ain’t that some shit?”) Vindictive bitterness has never been more fun to dance and sing along with.

ThornBrain says:
Yeah, it’s silly and kind of ridiculous. It’ll probably be tossed off down the road as just another novelty song, but there’s a surprising heart-on-the-sleeve quality to it that gives it much more longevity than that. It comes across more as a guy having fun at the outset of heartbreak instead of as some asshole deciding to be “controversial” or “lulzy”. That combined with Cee Lo’s strong, soulful singing, and the song being generally a fun and amusing listen, should help it maintain more respect down the line.

•

• “Lay Me Down” by The Dirty Heads & Rome Ramirez
Southern California reggae-rock about being on the run, featuring the new guy from Sublime.

Sawtooth says:
This is the point in time where I finally got sick to death of Rock/Reggae fusion. This is a song that doesn’t have any sort of personality of its’ own. It’s definitely “mellow”, but that’s about as far as it goes. I’m sure these guys will permanently have an audience at Bonnaroo or someplace, but otherwise they’re just another lame beach-band with a singer with a range of only two pitches.

Sad truth time, guys. Sublime have ALWAYS sucked.

TheDramaticMonarch says:
Am I experiencing deja vu here because I feel like I’ve heard this song before. Oh, this isn’t a new Jack Johnson song? Well, how about 311? No? Huh, the Dirty Heads? Who the hell are they? For that matter, what the hell is this song? I swear this is like the audio equivalent of wallpaper. You enter a Starbucks or a Pac Sun and it’s just there, surrounding the room and not drawing a whole lot of attention to itself. Once you leave, it’s pretty much gone and unlikely to follow you home. In other words, “Lay Me Down” is really, really forgettable. I would honestly be surprised if this was considered a “hit” of any kind.

ThornBrain says:
Meh. Never liked this sort of Reggae-rock, pseudo-tropical thing. If you happen to be, it’s well played, sung, put together and everything, and the lyrics don’t sound dumb, but I wasn’t feeling it at any point.

The way I see it, there have been three different kinds of cover songs throughout history: There are those that don’t change much from the original, but capture or re-energize the spirit and essence of the original so well that it’s an extremely respectable effort. (See Social Distortion’s cover of “Ring of Fire” or Bauhaus’ cover of “Ziggy Stardust.”) Or there are those that take the original in a completely different direction and end up sounding wildly different from the song it’s based off of, and have a unique new take on it. (See DEVO’s cover of “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” or Apoptygma Berzerk’s cover of “Fade To Black.”)

I’m not here to talk about any of those though. I’m here to talk about the third kind…songs that miss the mark completely.

I don’t want to incite anger towards any of the artists involved, (But I will anyway.) for all I know the intentions were good. Maybe the musicians and singers in question really wanted to honor the memory of the songs they were covering. Whether that’s true or not, one thing’s for sure: They failed.

Miserably.

10. “Layla” by Eric Clapton – Original by Derek & The Dominos

Some of you might be a bit surprised. First of all let me make one thing clear: It is not the Derek & The Dominos “Layla” with Clapton and Duane Allman’s back and forth guitar dueling that I’m ripping into, it’s 1990s middle-of-the-road Clapton. The Eric Clapton who released an adult contempo album because he was feeling kind of down.

Even with that in mind some of you may be surprised. After all, among music critics, this version is widely considered the worst cover of a song of all time, and yet I’m including it at the very bottom of my list.

Here’s the thing: I don’t consider the 90s version of “Layla” to be a bad song, necessarily. It’s not a style of music I particularly like, and it’s vastly inferior to the Derek & The Dominos original, but as a piece of soft rock it does it job fairly well.

I still include it here for the sheer disappointment it caused on two fronts: It beat out “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the Best Rock Song Grammy in 1992, one of the biggest upsets in Grammy history, and well… It’s Eric Clapton singing soft rock. He went from shredding blues to crooning to soccer moms. It’s like discovering one’s favorite athlete had been using steroids: It just kills you, man.

9. “Tutti Frutti” by Pat Boone – Original by Little Richard

I’m calling it here and now: white evangelical Christians are absolutely shit at entertainment in general. They had their chance, and ultimately what they have to show for it is Amy Grant, Stryper, Creed, and Pat Boone, the crooner who thought that Andy Williams was too racy.

Pat Boone had to have been very lucky to be famous during the 1950s, when American pop culture was at an all-time high for clean, non-threatening entertainment. It was during this time that Pat Boone was persuaded to make a similarly clean version of Little Richard’s maniacally brilliant song, “Tutti Frutti.”

Clean and WHITE. (It was the 50s.)

The end result was a soulless and sterile take on Little Richard’s hit, which had all the edge of a cotton ball. What was truly sickening however, was for all the musical incompetence and disturbing racial white-washing connotations of the cover, Pat Boone’s version became a bigger hit that Little Richard’s version.

To counter this later however, Little Richard sung his next big hit, “Long Tall Sally” at a deliberately breakneck speed, so no white artists keen on making a more family-friendly version of his music would be able to keep up with him.

How awesome is that?

8. “Once In A Lifetime” by The Exies – Original by The Talking Heads

Hands up to everyone who not only remembers, but is still a fan of the Exies.

That’s what I thought.

To the rest of the populace who are confused by my words, the Exies were nothing more than another addition to a growing legion of mopey nu-metal bands that inexplicably became popular during the early-to-mid-2000s. What they offered was the same brand of chugging soft-loud whiny metal that similarly interchangeable artists of the time period offered, with no discernible personality of their own to get in the way.

Oh, and they also recorded the absolute worst version of a Talking Heads song in human history.

The difference in genre couldn’t have been more massive. The Exies were an eyeliner wearing nu-metal band, while the Talking Heads were a quirky New Wave group from the 1980s. The original tune had a catchy beat and was punctuated with David Byrne’s manic rhymes about life and growing old, while the Exies decided that it needed more distortion and irritating amounts of angst.

As I said earlier there’s nothing wrong with taking a song in a different direction in covering it, but this version undergoes such a massive mood swing that it becomes a complete mess. It’s the musical equivalent of Bomberman: Act Zero, or whenever Frank Miller tries to write Batman.

7. “Boys Of Summer” by The Ataris – Original by Don Henley

Truth be told, I think this is one of those songs that nobody can pull off besides Don Henley. He just made it so personal, and the flourishes and touches that he added to it could only be pulled off by the Eagles frontman. That hasn’t stopped people from trying, though.

Two covers come to mind, both were equally retch-worthy. One was a cheesy Euro-beat version by DJ Sammy, but I opted not to include that one because I know DJ Sammy has done far far worse. So instead I offer up a more well-known version by another group who fizzed out without leaving anything of remote importance behind: The Ataris.

Let me frank: I absolutely HATE pop-punk/emo music. There’s few things that make my blood boil more than a bunch of snotty, shrill-voiced kids in skinny jeans whining about cutting themselves, apart from mainstream hip-hop, country, and nu-metal music. I hate this kind of music like Kefka hates espers.

The Ataris aren’t even pleasant to look at, because everything about them is filled with unlikable, shallow, emo kid stereotypes. So why would ANYONE think that they could pull off Henley’s song about loss of innocence with anything approaching subtlety?

One thing that galls me is they change one of the lines from the original, from “I saw a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac” to a “Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac.” The band doesn’t look like they were even alive when Black Flag broke up (1986), but they include that anyway.

What kind of pandering bullshit is THAT?

6. Any and all Kidz Bop songs

This seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?

For those of you unfamiliar with the Kidz Bop compilations, some stuffed suit decided that it’d be a neat little novelty to take popular songs and have them sung by pre-pubescent little kids…Because pop songs just weren’t shrill and annoying enough without tone deaf children singing along to them.

Some people might argue that these songs are good because they’re so bad. Frankly I don’t subscribe to that philosophy, because that gives them too much credit for making already bad songs sound even worse.

Not to mention giving too much credit to a compilation that professes to be family friendly for the kids, but covers songs that cover material far from being appropriate for kids. Do the people who come up with these things realize that songs like “Feel Good Inc”, “Beautiful Girls”, and “Tik Tok” are about anti-consumerism, suicide, and being a whore that gives away their services for free? (Prove me wrong on that last one.)

5. “Everybody Hurts” by DJ Sammy – Original by R.E.M.

“Everybody Hurts” was a hit song by R.E.M. from the 1990s about depression and suicide from their acclaimed album Automatic For The People. It was punctuated by solemn guitars and a string section arranged by none other than John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. In short: It’s a sad song.

DJ Sammy however, an opportunistic DJ from the 2000s, decided to make a quick dance charts buck off of R.E.M.’s well-crafted ballad, and remixed it into a lifeless Euro-beat song with a generic female vocalist. It was cheesy, forgettable, and extremely poor in comparison to original, which is like comparing Taco Bell to real food.

If there’s a line to cross as far as remixing goes, I’m calling it right now: This is the line. No remixing somber 90s alt rock songs. Okay?

4. “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” by Macy Gray & Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Original by Elton John

At this point in time I think we can all agree that the loss of Ol’ Dirty Bastard was of little consequence to the music community. I point to this inexcusable Elton John cover as evidence.

Listening to it, I’m beginning to wonder if ODB was ever a legitimate rapper to begin with, because he sounds more like he got into the Wu-Tang Clan as part of a community service program that lets mentally deficient people be rappers for a day, and he forgot to leave when it was over.

The original version by John and singer Kiki Dee was already a fairly silly song in and of itself, and I guess it makes sense that someone wouldn’t go into covering this too seriously, but it’s one thing to be silly, and it’s a completely different thing to be completely annoying beyond human measure, which is what Ol’ Dirty Bastard is, who doesn’t necessarily “sing”, so much as “yammer like a hobo on free soup day.”

Oh, and Macy Gray’s there too, singing so hoarsely she sounds like she kicked back a bottle of Buckfast before recording it into a karaoke machine.

3. “Ring Of Fire” by Olivia Newton-John – Original by Johnny Cash

Speaking of people who weren’t a great loss to the musical landscape, I don’t think anyone with a working brain is too hung up that Olivia Newton-John’s star never took off to a great degree…well no one except stark raving Grease fans. (But I DID say people with working brains, after all…)

What is the best way to do a cover of a song by Johnny Cash- a legend in country music- justice? Why by turning it into a disco song, of course! But just to be sure that we don’t alienate the potential market there is to be had from fans of the original, which was an outlaw country tune, let’s throw in some twangy southern guitars and a harmonica, loading it down with incessant amounts of cornball.

So instead of the outlaw country song from the 1960s with its stylish horn section, we have a freak-show hybrid of excessive, 1970s disco, and country music filled with all the silly clichés that “Ring Of Fire” previously discarded.

Rightfully so, this cover remains drenched in obscurity, because the album it was on (Ironically titled Making a Good Thing Better.) sold dismally. For good reason, too. Whatever you think of Olivia Newton-John as a singer or whatever else, I once again defer you to my previous point that certain lines are not meant to be crossed.

In fact that’s a new one. No disco covers of outlaw country songs.

2. “Behind Blue Eyes” by Limp Bizkit – Original by The Who

The main problem with expecting people to like a cover of a sad-sounding song like “Behind Blue Eyes” (Even if it’s ironic sadness) is that generally most people can sympathize with the singer in question in the original version. I don’t know ANYONE who’d feel bad for Fred Durst, a pinnacle to egomania.

As far as song covers go, this is a particularly dismal one. Not because it sounds sad, but because Durst seems to go out of his way to deliberately disrespect the memory of The Who’s original tune, from the heavily processed yet shrill and thin vocals, to the vastly out of place synth noises, to the complete removal of the bridge, only to replace it with a generic, down-tempo hip-hop beat, and… Uh… Text-to-speech vocals??

The only explanation I can think of is that Durst was trying to earn back some sympathy points after pissing them all away by acting like an officious prick for the majority of his musical career, and wanted an emotional song to sing. Only problem? “Behind Blue Eyes” isn’t actually a sad tune. Not with lyrics in the bridge like:

If I smile, tell me some bad news / Before I laugh and act like a fool

That’s my guess. That Durst was trying to earn some sympathy points, but instead everyone just rolled their eyes.

1. “My Generation” by Hilary Duff – Original by The Who

It’s official. Nothing is sacred.

The original by The Who is the prototype punk rock song. It’s about rebellion in it’s purest, simplest, unfiltered form…A subject that a Disney tart like Hilary Duff couldn’t fake without an instruction manual.

Duff’s irritating pop princess voice ruins vocals that were meant to be screamed and shouted amidst rock guitars and drum solos. Oh, but there’s no drum solos or rock guitars either. In fact the only thing resembling drums we get at all is a generic pop beat that sounds like it came from the same drum machine that every other pop star got it from.

The most inexcusable part however, is the way it handles the song’s classic line about teenage rebellion.

How did it go again? “Hope I DON’T die before I get old”?

There aren’t enough desks in the world for me to bang my head against.

I am willing to allow for leeway for anyone reading this who liked any of the previous songs, but there is no compromise on this one. If you like this cover, then that means you like empty wastes of space. That is the only thing this song could possibly be characterized as.

In short: it’s beyond awful.

Vocals flow effortlessly around the rhythm, as if they were willed into your mind. The guitar’s fuzzy distortion on “Wrap The Stars” and “Take Two” doesn’t call attention to itself, but greatly helps the songs. A variety of instruments and tones are used throughout this set of songs, and none of them sound like they were thrown in to add diversity; every tone just works well for every song.

Although the set could be considered shoegaze or maybe even dream pop, some songs dabble into other genres, like the vaguely country “To Begin“, which adds an acoustic touch to the established sound, or the soft alternative rock songs “Take Two” and “Winter“.

There are only two songs that didn’t work as well in the set for me, but they are only in the context of this being an album, not just a collection of songs. “Winter” and “Attack“, although fun songs, don’t seem to fit in with the rest of the set. Part of it may be the lack of lyrics (though this wouldn’t automatically cause songs to not fit in the set), but they both get much heavier as they progress. They start off familiar, but progress into something that would make them more like bonus track material.

Although I imagine the potential audience for this set has some limitations, it’s definitely an artist and collection of songs you’ll want to hear. You’ll probably be surprised with both the music quality and the fact that no one has signed her yet.

You can download this set for free at Ryli’s web site.

The Rising was among the music released, and it served as a new turning point in Bruce Springsteen’s career. The man was deeply affected by the tragedy of 9/11, and recorded this 2002 album with the intent of capturing the emotions that he and others like him had felt after the grisly event. The album goes through numerous emotions, from fury (The quiet, but intense “Nothing Man”) to hope for the future, (The uplifting “Waitin’ On A Sunny Day”) to an overwhelming sense of loss. (The somber “Into The Fire”, which has gone on to be one of the most enduring songs of the aftermath.)

What set The Rising apart from many other albums influenced by the events of 9/11, is despite the tone, it remains unconfrontational. Springsteen thinks nothing of revenge, (I’m looking at you, Toby Keith.) instead encouraging to rise above the animosity felt after the events, and come together. No song best encapsulates this message better than 7th track, “Worlds Apart”, which features Islamic Qawwali music as backing. A symbolic gesture, backed up by Springsteen’s powerful rock sound.

More than being a powerful post-9/11 album, is marked several milestones in Springsteen’s career. Before releasing The Rising, he hadn’t released an album of new material since 1995s The Ghost of Tom Joad, and it had been even longer since his last collaboration with his famous backing group, the E Street Band. (The last album of original material they’d made together was 1992s Human Touch.) The Rising not only brought Springsteen and the E Street Band back together writing material, but it became a widespread success for them, becoming their bestselling album since 1987s Tunnel of Love.

It revitalized Springsteen’s career, and to this day the tracks of The Rising stand as some of Springsteen’s most powerful, and most poignant of all his works.

The Highlights:

The opening track “Lonesome Day”, which serves as a powerful, hard-rocking, yet elegant introduction of things to come. Guitars, violins, and saxophones blare in unison as the Boss declares: “It’ll be okay…if I can just get through this Lonesome Day.”

The album’s mighty closer “My City Of Ruins”, a song originally written about Asbury Park, but now resonates more deeply with New York, largely because of Springsteen’s powerful performance of it which opened the America: A Tribute To Heroes telethon. An extremely sad song, made glorious by Springsteen’s call to rise from the ashes like a phoenix.

The beginning of the entire Visitor album starts out with an almost cliché feedback intro, but it doesn’t feel tacky in the context of the song. The feedback sound reappears throughout the rest it in appropriate parts as it builds up emotionally. I wouldn’t have picked a different song to start out with, though; it’s a great example of what you’ll be hearing in the rest of the album. “Bitte Ein Kuss” picks things up a bit, and introduces the drum machine, known as Are Too for aesthetic reasons. “But It Was Close” has similar instrumentation to the opening track, but with a piano coming in near the end to help build up the ending.

“Smile” almost stands out too much on this album. It’s a great song, but it’s the only blatantly “happy” song on the album. It’s the only thing that notably breaks up the flow of the entire album, but if you have to do that on an album, this is how it’s done. Are Too comes back for drum machine duty on “Perfect Pair” as well, and is accompanied by an interesting lo-fi acoustic guitar track. “Candle Song” is another acoustic track like “But It Was Close” or “Why Are We Fighting”; one of the less notable songs on the album, but not a track to skip.

“Yr Letter” appears to be a fan favorite, and possibly the emotionally strongest song on the album. It’s also one of the few songs on this album that sounds better live (There’s quite a powerful rendition on Jonah’s CD/DVD There’s A Lot In Here), but the studio version isn’t lacking much. “Visitor” is the only track I don’t like much on the album; it’s short, and there are noises in the background that aren’t particularly musical, though they aren’t too distracting. The lyrics are interesting, but short enough to make you wonder if it was added for the sake of a longer track list.

Next comes my personal favorite song from the album, “Softbelly”, which has the most appealing chilled-out guitar playing on the album. The final track, “Sixes”, isn’t too far behind in that category, either. The outtro to this song would have made a great ending to just about any album, but it finishes this album particularly well, like you have reached the end of a journey, and if you listened to Visitor from start to finish, you have.

Before the single’s release, she was already working on her own original music. “Never Be”, “Control”, “I Blame Coco”, and “No Smile” are a few of the demos that can be found across the web. They have a ska-without-brass/reggae sound to them, but it seems that this sound got old quick for her, or she just thought she couldn’t do enough with the genre.

The single: “Caesar”. Robyn (Sweden’s take on Lady Gaga with less gimmicks) provides vocal support on this vague song that references a few famous authority-related themes (Lord of the Flies, the Milgram Experiment). Miike Snow and Diplo both remixed this song at the time of the single’s release.

Later, Sub Focus became a collaborator, but this time it’s Coco providing the supporting vocals to the song. Together they made the song “Splash”, which has also seen some success and a remix by Rusko. The original instrumental track can be found on Sub Focus’s self-titled debut album, and the version with Coco Sumner’s vocals is on the “Splash” single.

Fyfe Dangerfield also worked with Sumner a bit; they ended up recording a cover of Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”. This hasn’t seen an official release yet.

On the MySpace account of I Blame Coco at the moment of this post, you can hear a number of the songs I mentioned, including a 2 minute sample of a completely revamped “No Smile”. You will also find “Self Machine”, which sounds like it is going to be the next single. The fact that it has been remixed by La Roux seems to back up this theory.

An album should be out soon. If not in a month or two, sometime this year at most. The improvement you can hear from the demos to the new samples show great promise for this artist, and not just for this upcoming release. The ability to work with such a wide variety of musicians (all of different genres so far) suggests great talent, so it’s up to you to pick a genre you like and give Coco a chance!

“Three Chord Valentine” opens the EP, and if you only listened to the first verse, you may mistake them for the most troubled emo band you’ve ever heard. The lyrics get more mentally stable as the song goes on, however, and the chord progression makes for a catchy rock track. It’s the cleanest mix on the EP, too; all the tracks afterwards suffer from that limited-studio-time sound.

“Por Vida” is one of the two tracks that can be considered early versions of the song, as they were recorded again for later albums. The track is less impressive overall in comparison to the first one, but it may be the favorite track of screamo fans as far as this EP goes.

Another track that was recorded again on a later release, “All Cried Out” has riffs that sound similar to “Three Chord Valentine”. It suffers from an almost annoying introduction that consists of only vocals and only a bit of guitar. Luckily, the rest of the song loses the vocal tone and gains instrument layers.

“The White Nightmare” is an unusual track for the band because none of their albums have a fully acoustic track, or even a song that comes close to how this one sounds. The song seems to only have three layers: main vocals, acoustic guitar, and backing/alternate vocals. On top of that, the guitar playing is rather unique. I doubt I’ll ever find anything that sounds like that with the interesting lyrics to go with it.

The problem with Vendetta Red is that their material can be pretty hard to find. Odds are you won’t hear any of these songs unless you ask the right person. Part of the reason why this is the case is that they broke up in 2006, but three of the original members went on to form Sirens Sister, so if you like the music and want to see them live, not all hope is lost… If you can make it to the Seattle area.

Most of the songs will sound the same when you first hear them. Unless this is the sort of music you listen to all the time, you probably won’t be able to name each song when you hear it, but a few songs do stand out enough to keep most people interested. The songs vary in length more than they do instrumentally; “Turn On Your Weakness” comes in at just under two minutes, while “Without Your Love” passes the five minute mark.

Two songs from this album, “Your Enemy’s Asleep” and “5/4“, have some brass sections in them which are the most soothing use of that type of instrument I have heard produced in modern music. While Young And Sexy is a much more popular group, they are musically very much like Cold Sides, the main difference being the mood and vocals.

Some people will absolutely love this music; It didn’t happen for me, but the talent is surely there. Give Young And Sexy‘s third album a full listen and you might find yourself putting the whole thing on repeat next time you feel like doing nothing at all.

The album is basically 45 minutes of the classic Grinspoon sound (even Phil Jamieson, known in the USA for writing two Unwritten Law songs that received radio play, implements his raspy scream a bit on this album) along with stuff that was discovered in the later period post-New Detention. For example, in “Dogs”, Phil combines both the old sound with the new vocals while retaining the still-nonsensical-yet-worthy-of-Faulkner lyrics. That song, due to an early leak, made me think that it was going to be another “Black Tattoo” (lead single from Alibis and Other Lies); another good song found within the rubbish of forgettable pastiche. However, tracks following it, including the single “Comeback” and the deep cut “Tonight”, retain that sound; the mix between the old and the new. The album, with that mixture in place, makes it seem as if a war is happening in my headphones: a war between pop vocals and metal hooks without the shady transitions of Maximum The Hormone. It is definitely a far cry from “Minute by Minute”.

As many fans have stated, this album is basically that same sound for twelve tracks, which makes it a bit bland. However, that sound reminds me a bit of Easy, where every song had distortion and drop-D tuning. The fans were probably comparing the album to the “variety” found on Alibis And Other Lies, which was mediocre at best, and seeing that there wasn’t much of it to be found here. Well, fans who want to hear another “Minute by Minute”: you’re not going to discover it. You will discover another “Find Your Own Way” (“Give You More”, a very impressive alt-blues song reminiscent of Thrills’ “Enemy”) and another “Chemical Heart” (“Summer”, but without the depressing drug abuse undertones), but no catchy pop songs with memorable hooks. Instead, Pat Davern has concocted alt-metal songs with catchy hooks (“Premonitions”, “Dogs”, “Run”, “Tonight”) – he’s probably tired of all the pop music as I am. As for the lyrics, some songs are a little more blunt in nature (“Comeback” is basically about the pressures of fame and “Premonitions” is about what fame can do to one’s stress) while some are still on that line between silly and genius due to Phil’s writing style (“Dogs”, “Tonight”, “Summer”). They have not really changed a bit since 1997′s Guide to Better Living (and, to me, Phil’s best song lyrically was “Railrider” from that same album, itself a scathing view of religious hypocrisy in the modern era).

If I were to choose songs that I would want you to check out before downloading or purchasing the album, I would say that you would check out “Dogs”, “Comeback”, and “Summer”. Those songs, with Pat’s quality control and Phil’s pop-worthy vocals, are probably the catchiest Grinspoon songs I have heard since the New Detention era. There’s no doubt that I approve of this album. Even when I compare this to a benchmark album (i.e. Trout Mask Replica or The Chicago Transit Authority), it still makes high scores. Grinspoon not only have outdone themselves on their comeback; they did twice that and even kept traces of their experimental albums for those pop fans.