Los Campesinos! - Hold on Now, Youngsters...

This band was introduced to me by a friend cautiously claiming, "these guys are like pitchfork's favorite band right now but they're actually pretty good." my brain ran through the good list (arcade fire, lcd soundsystem) and the bad list (wolf parade, their commentary on Travis Morrison and Asian man records) and eventually mulled over the sad fact that critics from high profile publications immediately skew your perspective on a band before you listen to them. Well shit.

My one complaint about Los campesinos is that the songs have a tough time standing apart from each other.

Everything else about this record was a very welcome pleasant surprise. It kicks off with a full force assault of bells, violins, Pavement-esque guitar leads and really ridiculous British accents. The new punk underground would love this record if they ever give it a chance: it sounds a bit faster than they can play and sing, and the volumes range from loud to explosive to obnoxious and the catchy hooks are words like "we have to take the car because the bike is on fire" and "its you, its me, and there's dancing."

While this band owes a tad of debt to the first rentals record, they've taken those ideas (and for the most part, the instrumentation) made them twice as fast and quite a bit more complicated. What I mean by this is that they have clearly taken specific steps to make even the quiet moments of this record so much fun that it is hard to listen to without smiling. Even the slower song, "Knee Deep at ATP" builds up with the ridiculous "Every photo that you took that festival got lost in your camera in an insurance scam / And though underexposed, i could see from the quality, his K Records t-shirt and you holding his hand"

Its that fun that they pull off so flawlessly that make the goofy emo-style lyrics endearing, the overbearing accents charming and the songs breathe life that bands who have gone for this instrumental arrangement don't ever achieve. I mean, shit, they sound like they really enjoyed making this record and they are always letting you know in every song. Upon hearing this record I was super excited that a band was finally doin this overarranged punk thing very well and pretty jealous that I didn't make this record, as they've kinds articulated my schizophrenic tastes better than I've ever known how.

So I guess this is the best record of the year right now. If your friend with the handlebar moustache and beruit t shirt recommends this, you'll finally have a common bond.

--
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Stereo Total - Do the Bambi (2005)

A few years ago I played a punk rock show with a grindcore band at a
sushi restaurant in a hippie influenced city and north Carolina. It
was a pretty strange experience accompanied appropriately by strange
synthetic bleeps and bloops and a french woman smoothly crooning over
the pa. The music continued while we were eating, foraying into surf
music, garage rock and rapping. Once I heard the theremin I knew I had
to figure out what the fuck this was.

The bartender told me it was Stereo Total and naturally that this new
record wasn't as good as the old stuff. He told me it wasn't noisy
enough... Too poppy. I told him I loved it, I love pop music and he
was kind enough to burn me a copy.

Since then I have been trying to wrap my brain around stereo total. I
have LOVED this record at times, I've HATED it at times and upon
listening to it today I'm still not sure where I stand. Most of my
problems come back to the fact that at nineteen tracks, this record is
too damn long yo.

Aside from trailing off quite significantly after "Cannibale", every
track on this record could stand alone on a seven inch (if the one-two
punch of "Hungry!" and "Ne M'appelle Pas Te Liche" was the only thing
this band ever released I think they would be my favorite band ever.)
There is a LOT going on here that differentiates this french
male/female duo from other beat/synth driven dance pop, making them
pretty damn special because this could be pretty damn awful.

While this record goes to a million places, those places never seem to
come back together and aside from the build up of the first few
tracks, it really lacks congruity. I guess that's alright because a
lot of these songs are so good and inventive. But I have a hard time
thinking of any context where I would want to listen to all these
songs in a row. Still worth checking out though.

Green Day - American Idiot (2004)

IN DEFENSE OF GREEN DAY'S AMERICAN IDIOT

Point of order #1: Forget the eyeliner. I have no idea what happened there, what is happening there, so let's just try and remember that these dudes are old and this choice is one of the very few wrong aesthetic choices they've made. We all make mistakes n shit.

Point of order #2: Forget the overdramatic music videos. SHIT. What were those about? I mean, I guess music videos aren't created to relate to people in their twenties. They're supposed to be visual tools for the younger set to get interested in things; politics, music, punk subculture, driving down dusty roads? I don't know. Fuck that Samuel Bayer guy. I watched him speak about these videos... JEEEEEEZ.

And I guess that's how this album is remembered amongst my generation, who first heard this album and resoundingly acclaimed it - critically and personally, I heard this blasting out of cars at punk shows on tour across the country for a month after it came out - and now remember it as the record that turned Green Day into a behemoth of a rock band. They were almost punk again! After they put out a tamely mixed record of pretty decent songs, we were JUST READY TO LET THEM BACK INTO THE UNDERGROUND! BUT THEN THEY GOT FAMOUS AGAIN! OH NO!!!

It seems that Green Day walks this unfair line where they are allowed to break new ground and everyone will praise them for it, but once this style which is new to the scene starts to get imitated (blue hair in the 90's, glockenspiels, timpanis and anti-bush sentiments in the aughts) the old fans turn their backs and make way for younger fans to come in in droves, and take over til it's time to turn their backs. Old fans like to blame Green Day for the onslaught of bombastic punk-operetta that has been unearthed since American Idiot was successful (My Chemmy Ro Ro and the bunch), but SHIT do you remember where mainstream punk was heading before that? Does anyone remember Good Charlotte, Avril Lavigne and the tons of other shitty shitty fashion-pop bands that Green Day put in their place by doing what a punk band is supposed to, take chances? Remember Ashlee Simpson's record?

What American Idiot did in 2004 is the same thing as what the Clash did in the 1980's - they killed commercial punk rock forever. By stepping so far outside of the box that they started to seem less and less categorizable, they signaled the Fallout Boys of the world to drop the tag of "punk" to sell their music and most of these underground bands never fail to point out that they are NOT punk bands. When the Clash released politically charged dance jams on Combat Rock they showed the world that punk equated to your whole presentation and definitely not the standard three chords played fast fast fast. While Green Day stick to very few chords, there is a ton of next level shit that hadn't been heard from a punk band in the mainstream on this record, mostly heard in the two nine-minute bookends, but also by bringing influence of bands like Dillinger Four and Husker Du to people and places who would have never heard it. They kinda made a new generation start caring about politics and researching what's going on in the world, and even if it didn't resonate in that election it seems like it's becoming more and more clear to people.

OH AND ALL THE SONGS ARE FUCKING CATCHY AS HELL. From each mini-melody in "Jesus of Suburbia" to the simple but mind-blowing guitar lead in "Whatshername" even to the shitty but still hummable "Extraordinary Girl." THAT IS NOT AN EASY THING TO DO.

So let's re-cap. It made a lot of young kids start thinking about politics, their government and the future of the earth. It made faux-punk bands stop pretending they were punk bands and start acting like the arena rock bands that were in their hearts, leaving the underground aesthetic to the outcasts. It brought relatively new thoughts and ideas (concept rock! mini-operas!) to the world via punk-rock's most visible band. It had thirteen very very good songs. And funny enough, they were all pretty much about not knowing what the hell is going on, which I think is a sentiment anyone can agree with a lot of the time.

Just listen to the record again - it still holds up pretty well. When they were aping Screeching Weasel and Crimpshrine with a little more pop flair, Green Day were retroactively claimed as a great band but whenever they start breaking new ground on the radar people start to give them shit. Well, maybe it's all that eyeliner and shitty music videos.