The Worst of 2009

SIMON SWEETMAN

We will get to best-of lists soon enough; but it's time for a purge. Here I stick two fingers down the throat of my archives and cough up the worst albums I had to listen to this year; the ones I really didn't want to; the ones that really didn't move me; the ones that missed the boat. Yes, yes, in my opinion.

I regularly update you with lists of my recent 1-Star reviews; so hopefully I haven't repeated any here. Many of these did not make it to print and some of them appeared in the Dominion Post. So have a read, have a chuckle or get angry - and agree or disagree. Most important, share the worst albums you had to listen to below. Perhaps you reviewed some bad music too? Maybe you work in an environment (retail, hospitality) where you had to endure some bad music? And maybe you just made some bad downloading/purchasing choices? Do share. Meanwhile, here's the audio purgatory (and worse) that I had to experience:

MUDVAYNE
The New Game

The worst albums to review are not the ones you hate; they're fun. You tear out 200 words warning people that the record is horrific and compare with natural disasters, plagues and terrorists acts. The albums you love are fun to review too, even though you have to think a bit more and are hopeful you will say something new in the process. What you don't want to do is repeat yourself, which is bad, very bad, repeating yourself is bad. You don't want to do that. No, the hardest albums to review are the ones you really don't care about either way, the ones you would love to write one word about: "meh". It's not even a real word, that's how little you care. Writing is about having a reaction (and creating one). And then bands like Mudvayne - who you were sure had ceased to be (in all senses) many moons ago - release albums like The New Game with hyperbole on the cover sticker like "long awaited" and you have no real reaction. You are forced to say things like "fans will love it", "nothing new here", "solid, but not exciting" and you know yourself that that is not really much of a review. But you write it anyway.

PROPAGANDHI
Supporting Caste

The press-bio that accompanies this album begins, "greetings aspiring and/or tattered and weary music journalist!" Fantastic. How did they know? I'm a little of column A, a little of column B...and reading the band's suggestions to add the following cut-and-paste terms to the review: "most eagerly anticipated release of (insert year here)", "ground-breaking!", "critically hailed!", "a work of staggering genius" and "Propagandhi is arguably the most important band alive" made it very easy to come up with the following: This is not the most eagerly anticipated release of 2009; it is not ground-breaking! It is not critically hailed! I would rather be re-reading Dave Eggers' Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius than ending up having to laugh at some young kid who thinks Propagandhi is arguably the most important band alive. Supporting Caste is neither the best nor worst album from this American modern punk band that has been releasing material since 1986. I like that they include metal guitar solos within the framework of their fast, political punk and the press-bio gave me a laugh.

STATIC-X
Cult of Static

This is Static-X's sixth album in 10 years and the riffs are too lightweight for the intended metal edge, the lead singer still sounds like he might shout "me wan' cookie!" at any point in any song (an occupational hazard when performing this kind of music) and the processed beats do not sit well within the songs; the music is not strong enough as metal and not cool enough as dance music. Tera-Fied is not without its charms, nearly as bonkers as the Guns N' Roses Chinese Democracy material, but still lacking in originality. And that is ultimately the problem with this album, the Cookie Monster making cookie-cutter metal has become the standard. And there will always be enough of a metal fan-base to support this mediocrity. That fan-base will always get angry at critics for purposely putting the boot into metal, but really the bands should be trying to kick something into their songs. And that's the issue here. Fear Factory made a better fist of this kind of music over a decade ago - this feels redundant and uninspired. 

KEVIN RUDOLF
In the City

Kevin Rudolf's debut album, In the City, follows his production and writing work for T-Pain, Kanye West, Nelly Furtado and Black Eyed Peas, to name a few. So he has success, if not talent. The first single, Let It Rock, has been a huge success, driven by the fact that it's essentially a vehicle for Lil' Wayne, and he is very popular with the tweens and teens that like this sort of thing. In the City is a bizarre album - it's so tweaked and thin-sounding, which I find odd for a producer who is also a guitarist: normally that would see a really big sound and you would hope for more rock. Rudolf is being hyped as someone who will change the sound of hip-hop and one or two of the tracks are very catchy; it's certainly nice to have a chomp of guitar chords and a jangle or two of funk rather than borrowed drum beats and stolen bass lines the whole time. But, Rudolf's sound is nothing innovative. It feels like Rudolf would rather make pop/rock songs and has gone for the easy cash-in of involving big-selling names from the hip-hop world and ultimately it feels like a very thin Limp Bizkit record; their albums were awful.

KERI HILSON
In a Perfect World...

Well I know the title's a lie, because if it were the case I would not be writing this and would have never listened to the album, so thanks for that Keri! Hilson has been a writer and backing singer for the pop-side of R'n'B for a while now, working with Kanye West and Ne-Yo, Ciara, Usher and Britney Spears. This debut full-lengther has been delayed (again, if the title was true that would still be the case) but clearly there's a fan base - and here in New Zealand the single has raced to the top of the charts. It's hard to know why, really; this sounds as non-committal and interchangeable as anything Kelly Rowland has released. And despite some big names weighing in here (Kanye, Timbaland, Keyshia Cole, Lil' Wayne, Akon) there really is no depth to this album. Sixteen plodders that have the same surface sheen and nothing underneath them. Actually, now I know why it raced to the top of the charts.

BIG B
American Underdog

Bryan Mahoney is Big B, apparently. He is a member of the rap-rock group OPM and as a solo artist has released the non-masterpieces, High Class White Trash and White Trash Renegade. Here he suggests he's the American Underdog - but that's not true. He's an over-represented part of mainstream society, singing about how he's only interested in "hot women, cold beers and really good drugs". And then, "all my friends are criminals/all my friends are bad guys/all my friends are low lives/they won't think twice to take your life". Nice. Take Kid Rock (please, take him...) and strip any talent you perceive him to have (you'll need tweezers and a microscope) and then you have Big B. This is the sort of album you could probably pass off to friends as a comedy album. But for that to happen you would need to listen to it for more than two or three minutes; by which time you might no longer have friends. So, it's not really worth it. And because of that, this review ends here.

CIARA
Fantasy Ride

Ciara's third album continues to move between slow-jam R'n'B (the opener, Ciara to the Stage) and hopped-up disco pop (first single, Love Sex Magic has a cameo from Justin Timberlake). The problem with Ciara's music - as she's actually very good within this genre - is that she has two settings and it definitely works better when she's rocking the up-tempo pop side of R'n'B. She doesn't stand out doing the slam-jams. And, the next part of that same problem is that her music seems to exist - as with Rihanna - for the videos; the choreography. Part of that problem is addressed with this "Limited Edition Deluxe" that offers a 50-minute DVD of live tracks, behind the scenes footage and music videos. But it's all fluff and padding, smoke and mirrors. These are empty songs that breeze by and will never be memorable. Hot Price (with Ludacris) is interesting - but then there's one track with Chris Brown, one with Young Jeezy, one with The-Dream and one with Missy Elliott, leaving Ciara to carry the second half of the album by herself. And she can't.

FALTER
As Far As I Can Get from Here

Christchurch band Falter seem to have arrived from nowhere with their debut album, As Far As I Can Get From Here. Inevitably the group has shifted to Auckland - the big smoke. Well, if you're going to disappear into obscurity it's probably best to move to the country's largest city. It's scary to find that this band has actually been around since 2003 - working on the Boost Mobile School's tour in 2006. Road-tight, with more than 100 shows under their belt, Ben (bass, vocals), Thaddeus (drums) Simon (guitar, vocals) and Hook (guitar, vocals) sound like New Zealand's previous shining examples in the pop-punk world, Zed and Goodnight Nurse;  there's even, with Running Out, the sound of that old warhorse of NZ musical mediocrity, The Feelers. I'm amazed these bands continue to appear and then (mercifully, eventually) disappear. My advice would be to not actually listen to this album, just read the title and follow its advice.

GRANDMASTER FLASH
The Bridge: Concept of a Culture

Grandmaster Flash - with his "wheels of steel" - is of course a hip-hop pioneer. The Bridge: Concept of a Culture is his 11th album and it's really not a point of entry, nor is it necessary for any fans of the genre. The only thing you can really take from it is the name Grandmaster Flash - and chances are, you're reading a hip-hop review, you've heard the name before. Flash seemed to see the writing on the wall as gangsta rap emerged at the end of the 1980s and moved away from the studio to set himself up as a still in-demand touring DJ, delighting club crowds with the old-school favourites. Here he attempts to, erm, bridge that gap and end the studio silence. His beats sound messy and the collaborations with modern rappers - Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, KRS-One (all close to has-beens at any rate) - don't really work. It's not altogether ghastly, there's just nothing here for anyone other than a hip-hop/Grandmaster Flash completist.

ESKIMO JOE
Inshalla

It's amazing to think bands like Eskimo Joe keep going. We hear about them when the debut gets released and they visit (as was the case) and then a few years pass and you figure the band is gone. But that's the power of being an Australian band as opposed to a Kiwi act - there's a huge homeland audience and bands can, seemingly, just keep working the roads of Australia, through Warrnambool and Wycheproof, over to Broome and Gnowangerup (yep, they're all real places) and just keep working until radio picks up the songs, a second album and a third album appear...and that's where Eskimo Joe is at now. Inshalla is album number three - and the band seems to sit somewhere between Powderfinger and Silverchair. That's probably a good place to sit - as both of those acts (massive in Australia) are part-time at best these days. Eskimo Joe's sound has not changed a great deal from when I first heard them about five years ago. I care about as much for it now as I did then. But they've clearly got a career figured out. Good luck wowing the crowds at the Bendigo RSL.

THE VOLUNTEERS
Friends Family & Fools

I was impressed with The Volunteers when I first heard them. Debut album Friends Family & Fools really makes a point of trying to take in as many different song-styles as possible. Such is the effort and gusto of this band that I expected to find a kitchen sink somewhere within one of the songs - and I'm sure I just didn't look hard enough. It's there. It has to be. There's some slick white-boy funk and soul (You Had It All Along) and straight-ahead pop-rock (Take the Money) but this record really does not stand up after a few spins. At first I wanted to applaud the band for not singing about the same old things but really there is not a lot happening on this album, despite the illusion (and allusions) that everything is happening. It's the music of observation rather than experience. And that observation amounts, largely, to guesswork.  It's an interesting approach (backing singers adding doo-wops and cooing behind the main vocalist) but it's unrealistic to expect anyone other than the three groups named in this record's title to blindly follow.

SOLA ROSA
Get It Together

Andrew Spraggon has been operating as Sola Rosa for a decade now, but the last two albums have seen the creation of a band to flesh out the funk in the evolution of the Sola Rosa sound. Building from electronica and cinematic downbeat concepts to a blunted R'n'B and funk approach the band sound of Sola Rosa still showcases Spraggon's world of music. Sometimes, as the title of this album wants to encompass, it all comes together and opening cut The Ace of Space is a classic example, a hundred ideas splattering the canvas but there's room for all of them. But for every musical step forward, the vocalists (guests Iva Lamkum, Spike Tee, Bajka, Serocee) drag the sound back a decade to Sola Rosa's original template, feeling like anonymous club tracks. Nothing on this album is terrible but I can't get very excited about it. I wanted to, but I can't. It feels like beats and pieces rather than a whole album. I have always considered Sola Rosa to be very clever - either as solo artist or bandleader - but this album feels like treading water.

THE DREAM
Love vs. Money

Terius Youngdell Nash is The Dream, writer of Rihanna's huge hit, Umbrella; writer for Mariah Carey, Usher, Jesse McCartney, Ciara and Mary J. Blige. And for all the duds that he has worked on (Jamie Foxx's Intuition) it is hard to deny the big hits (Beyonce's Single Ladies). In 2007 The Dream released Love/Hate and apparently already has most of Love King in the can - so the meat in the sandwich is Love vs. Money, a set of songs that sounds uncomfortably thin, with The Dream offering "to go halves in a baby" and other romantic and noble notions. Modern R'n'B feels interchangeable and Love vs. Money has The Dream name-dropping all of the pop stars he has played hit-maker to. I wouldn't want to hear an album of Phil Spector performing his hits (okay, that's a bad example and a bad choice of words within that example) but surely Terius Nash was living the dream before he stepped out as The Dream? If you were capable of selling such pap wouldn't you want to keep quiet and be thought a fool, albeit a rich one? Here he opens his mouth, follows the proverb, and proves it.

AFI
Crash Love

It's hard to know what to say about AFI's new album - it's better than other work the band has done, well, it's less confusing - but the relative straightness of this project might be what makes it seem a bit confusing to some. To explain further: here's a band that was a seventh-wave-of-punk act for mall brats. Then there were attempts at trenchcoat-in-a-mall Goth and Nine Inch Nails-meets-Death Cab for Cutie appeals to the people watching re-runs of The O.C. Davey Havok and guitarist Jade Puget released an electronic album as Blaqk Audio in 2007, that was awful, but presumably left the pair happy to go back to the basics of stripped-down but still far-too-shiny post-emo stadium curtain-raising rock. And here we have Crash Love, dull and repetitive and for all the big chorus-attempts this is left seeming rather lifeless. The worst kind of music to have to review; it's not completely ghastly but it doesn't even have aspirations (however misguided) to be any better than it is.

KOTTONMOUTH KINGS
The Green Album

It saddens me to say that The Kottonmouth Kings have been making music (throw your hands up! If only to make "air-quotes" around the word music) for 15 years and The Green Album is the band's tenth record. You will also see from the cover that they are narrowing the number of entendre for each album-length joke: The Green Album being a celebrating of marijuana. We open with Blaze of Glory, which has the mixed-race American rock-rappers claiming to want to go down in a blaze of glory, gunshots providing the percussion. The next song, Rock Like Us, has the band asking its audience how many people they know that can rock like them. Sadly, far too many. And that's no compliment. Trippin features a stolen Dr Dre beat; a complete rip-off. Did Kottonmouth Kings not get the memo that endlessly circulates the hip-hop world? Only Dr Dre is allowed to steal his own beats and rip himself off ad infinitum. And if you thought I was overstating the band's reliance on the green stuff for this Green Album, the song Pack Your Bowls begins: "pack your bowl/let's get stoned". Yes, just the one entendre on display here. Again and again and again...

BROKENCYDE
I'm Not a Fan...But the Kids Like It!

British author and social commentator Mick Harvey described a video by Brokencyde as "a-near-perfect snapshot of everything that's sh*t about this point in the culture". I haven't seen the video but had the same reaction when I heard that this band described themselves as "hip-hop-screamo-punk-crunk". Or for that matter when I heard that the four band members were named: Se7en, Phat J, Mikl and Antz. Just remember, in so many cases, I listen to this music so that you don't have to. And if you were at all tempted to listen to this you should be more encouraged by the $50 you might get from selling your stereo on TradeMe. If your children ask you to buy it for them you should tell them that they can have this CD after they watch every Merchant-Ivory film (now there's a cultural stalemate) and if you ever hear the worst noise ever - worse than that time a cat that can flawlessly impersonate Scottish drag-cabaret artiste Sealion Dyin', was being spun in a blender powered by a Blink 182 covers band with amps that go all the way to 11 - well then you are, regrettably, listening to the band BrokeNCYDE. Run!

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