Track Listing:

Rise & Fall, Rage & Grace

1. Half-Truism
2. Trust in You
3. You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid
4. Hammerhead
5. A Lot Like Me
6. Takes Me Nowhere
7. Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?
8. Nothingtown
9. Stuff Is Messed Up
10. Fix You
11. Let’s Hear It for Rock Bottom
12. Rise and Fall

Image credited to: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/The_Offspring_-_Rise_and_Fall%2C_Rage_and_Grace.jpg

Seeing Sounds

1. Time for Some Action
2. Everyone Nose (All the Girls Standing in the Line for the Bathroom)
3. Windows
4. Anti Matter
5. Spaz
6. Yeah You
7. Sooner or Later
8. Happy
9. Kill Joy
10. Love Bomb
11. You Know What
12. Laugh About It

Image credited to: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/N.E.R.D_-_Seeing_Sounds.jpg

One may wonder why I grouped these two bands together.  On one hand is a punk band obsessed with their metal godfathers and their alternative contemporaries; on the other is, well, not a rock band (those who disagree with me should be reeducated of what rock music is before talking back to me).  The Offspring and N.E.R.D are miles apart in their creative influences – yes, both tend to be awfully clichéd and unimaginative, but the two bands are so different that even their lyrics – which carry a similarly trite gist of things – sound unalike.

The Offspring miss much of their punk panache that they could be proud of throughout Smash, Ixnay, Americana, and Conspiracy; even in their disappointingly alternative 2003 effort Splinter was some commendable robust work, such as “Hit That” and “Lightning Rod”.  Yes, Dexter Holland is rarely creative anyway when he blurts out bullshit about his numerous past girlfriends, the flaws of American life, and his own political ideologies, but the breakneck pace and the entertainment factor that the Offspring’s music presents makes amends for their punk-rock platitudes.

Rise & Fall, however, doesn’t even make the cut in either respect.  The largely acoustic “Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?” is definitely not remindful of the rocking Offspring years ago, pulling out emotionally overwrought, nostalgic lyrics like “There’s a moment in time / and it’s stuck in my mind / way back, when we were just kids.”  “A Lot Like Me” almost slips up with the same mistake – Holland’s musings are much too serious while the music drops in tempo and the intensity usually associated with punk dissipates.  And, had I been omnipotent, I would have forbidden “Fix You”, an incredibly bland number most probably inspired by Coldplay’s X&Y single of the same name (and we thought the Offspring was a punk band), to be designated “punk” at all or face immediate expulsion to oblivion.

This air of solemn meditation pervades Rise & Fall like oil sprawls over a puddle of water – i.e. they do not fit together.  Yes, there are some decent hard-rockers on the album – “Half-Truism”, “Hammerhead”, “Rise and Fall”, among others – that salvage this album from being officially abysmal, but the Offspring must revise their creative influences should they ever want to reach their rightful status as the world’s most loved punk rock band once again.

And while N.E.R.D doesn’t manage to be serious in any way, shape, or form, very much the same verdict can be placed upon their newest album Seeing Sounds; the Neptunes, too immersed in the creation of the perfect cross-genre sound (which doesn’t turn out too great in any case) seem too horny and obsessed with girls to admit any sort of lyrical creativity at all (one listen to “Everyone Nose” or “Yeah You” reveals all).  Their obsession with hip-hop has accumulated in all the wrong ways, and N.E.R.D cannot, in any case, be labelled rock at all.  The repetitive hip-hop styled beat, Pharrell Williams’s rapping, and the abundance of elements of hip-hop everywhere nullify the very few guitar solos and other miscellaneous elements of rock that of course do not have the right to designate this album a “rock” album.

FINAL RATING: Rise & Fall, Rage & Grace: B–; Seeing Sounds: C+

Track Listing:

1. Living Well Is the Best Revenge (Runner-up)
2. Man-Sized Wreath
3. Supernatural Superserious (Best song)
4. Hollow Man
5. Houston
6. Accelerate
7. Until the Day Is Done
8. Mr. Richards
9. Sing for the Submarine
10. Horse to Water
11. I’m Gonna DJ (Commendable)

Image credited to: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/85/R.E.M._-_Accelerate.jpg

R.E.M. doesn’t have much of a reputation for hard rockers and raw intensity.  Yes, many of their greatest hits throughout their entire catalogue – “Losing My Religion”, “Drive”, “Man on the Moon”, “Imitation of Life” – are thoughtful and in a transfixed state of eternal wonder, most manifest through Michael Stipe’s most cryptic poetry.  Though not quite as artful as Radiohead, nor quite as uninteresting as Coldplay (thank God), R.E.M. stakes their own place in critics’ good books as alternative rock’s most valid exponents – back when alt-rock possessed some artistic value, back when alt-rock had not morphed into some pop-punk alter-ego so disturbingly unimaginative.  Even alt-rock may be too upbeat a tag for two of R.E.M.’s most celebrated albums – Out of Time and Automatic for the People – both of which were largely acoustic and unorthodox.  Who would have honestly thought that the band’s most successful single is based upon a mandolin?

But R.E.M.’s still a rock band, after all, and it is rather unfortunate that their road back to their roots has been rocky at best.  Indeed, some of their post-Automatic works – most notably New Adventures in Hi-Fi of 1996 – do deserve credit for injecting some complementary vitality into R.E.M.’s deliberations.  However, R.E.M.’s directional tangent back in 1994 – the recording of Monster – landed them upon foreign ground.  Down the years and through the albums came a downcast dawn of realisation upon legions of R.E.M. fanatics: Stipe and company are staring defiantly down a steep hill and things look too bad for them to come back up.

Such a prediction was premature at best.

R.E.M.’s newest installment tells all from its front cover: accelerate is exactly what Accelerate does.  Its curtain-raiser, the fast-paced “Living Well Is the Best Revenge”, seems miles more vivacious and energetic than 90% of the band’s entire catalogue, yet still preserves Stipe’s essential wisdom.  Bill Berry’s departure seemed to have dealt an irreparable blow upon R.E.M.’s creative inspirations, and although R.E.M. have not provided the best three minutes to have ever materialised from their collective vision, the band has seemingly calculated a way around their troubles.

Such optimism is greeted by more and more powerful music.  Accelerate’s lead single and admittedly best song, “Supernatural Superserious”, must be the trio’s most solid post-Automatic piece alongside “Imitation of Life”, with Stipe’s usually arcanely assertive lyrics (”And you realize your fantasies are / dressed up in travesties / Enjoy yourself with no regrets.”), Buck’s typically minimalist (yet purely robust) guitar, and Mills’ prominent bass.  The album closes with the exceptionally lively, definitely un-R.E.M. “I’m Gonna DJ”, which actually places a definitive finish to cap off what has been an resounding album with resounding lyrics and resounding music.  And the thing is – R.E.M.’s massive fanbase, along with their usually scrupulous critics, will not give a damn if the album is un-R.E.M. if it sounds good.

Even the lyrics, which has never been a problem for the poetically skilled Stipe, maintain R.E.M.’s usual mystique while adding a sort of tension and vigour that complements the music’s rough edges.  Accelerate’s opener, “Living Well Is the Best Revenge”, sees Stipe angrily claim: “All you sad and lost apostles / hum my name and flare their nostrils / choking on the bones you toss to them.”  Aforementioned lead single “Supernatural Superserious” proclaims with equal vitality: “Now there’s nothing dark and there’s nothing weird / don’t be afraid, I will hold you near / from the seance where you first portrayed / an open heart for a darkened stage / celebration of your teenage station.”  Of course, there’s nothing so unique about these lyrics except that they make us think; and making one think is one exceptionally difficult task to perform.  Well, Stipe and company seem to have performed that, and therefore R.E.M. seems to have finally grown accustomed to the ways of survival upon the territories that seemed so foreign back in 1994.

FINAL RATING: A-

Track Listing:

1. Chinese Democracy (Best song)
2. Shackler’s Revenge (Commendable)
3. Better (Runner-up)
4. Street of Dreams
5. If the World
6. There Was a Time
7. Catcher In the Rye
8. Scraped
9. Riad N’ the Bedouins
10. Sorry
11. I.R.S.
12. Madagascar
13. This I Love
14. Prostitute (Commendable)

Image credited to: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1f/GNRchinesedemocracy.jpg

Finally, it has arrived.  At the end of a seventeen-year-long hiatus, a thirteen-year-long recording process, numerous delays and empty promises, the sacrifice of Slash, McKagan, Stradlin, and co., and the introduction of Finck, Bumblefoot, Stinson, and countless others came, upon the last penultimate Sunday of November, the release of the long-awaited Chinese Democracy.  What seemed to be a perpetual myth, a legendary, fictitious album much like Smile of the Beach Boys, has finally materialised from nothingness.  Sure, it would be a complete tragedy had Axl Rose and his newfound cohorts never launched the overhyped album, but every unkept pledge and every hollow guarantee gradually constructed an unfortunate barrier of mistrust and scepticism that rendered Chinese Democracy almost fabled.

As much as it was heroically folkloric towards fans of rock music, however, there was an unmistakable air of cynicism about Chinese Democracy.  Undoubtedly the greatest living guitarist upon the planet, along with an exceptional bassist, an influential rhythm guitarist and a by-no-means incompetent drummer had all departed, leaving a huffing-and-puffing Axl Rose upon their wake, who continued to pull the strings in what seemed to be his own little dictatorship, ruthlessly firing his bandmates and uncompromisingly determined to go about Gn’R’s business like it was his own.  Foreign genres, untested bandmates, and acrimonious reactions from fans saw many – including me – write the former heavyweights of rock n’ roll off as a spent force.

Well, Axl had – and still has – two words for those doubters out there, adorned with capital letters and an exclamation mark: FUCK YOU!

And such is with great volition that he does so: Axl Rose and his newest assembly of colleagues have cooked up nothing short of a powerful comeback from their seventeen years of dormancy.  Chinese Democracy possesses a sense of steel and outright vigour that even exceeds large portions of the Use Your Illusion albums; the title track opens the album with whispers of Mandarin, before launching into a knife-edge riff and a cutting scream from Axl that blasts the song into full swing.  Some skillful guitar work from avant-garde virtuoso Buckethead also pervades the song that, while not being able to match the electrifying Slash of old, still commendably beats out others of its kind for its sheer power and technicality.

Such intensity and potency is exactly what fuels this album above all other qualities.  Even the piano-laden semi-ballads of “Street of Dreams” and “Catcher In the Rye” have moments of musical savagery, while “Riad N’ the Bedouins” and “Shackler’s Revenge” hearken back to the uncompromising Appetite for Destruction.  “Better”, now a personal favourite of my own Gn’R collection, begins with a distorted Axl retorting: “No one ever told me / when I was alone / they just thought / I’d know better,” before lashing out with vehement lyrics and an acute guitar riff.  The album’s curtain-closing epic, the bluntly named “Prostitute”, must be one of Gn’R’s most monumental creations within their existence; although its sound and length cannot match its elaborate predecessors “November Rain” and “Estranged”, its lyrical guile outdoes countless other Gn’R achievements in the past.

And such is exactly what also lights up Chinese Democracy – lyrical excellence.  Appetite was never a poetically magnificent work; it was instead glorified for its raw ferocity, Axl’s ripping vocals, and Slash’s remarkable solos.  Use Your Illusion, while instrumentally elaborate, did little to improve the thoughtful factor of whatever was coming out of the mouth of the volatile frontman.  Well, with the exodus of the imposing top-hatted maestro, Chinese Democracy became Axl’s opportunity to shine alone within the spotlight, which refused to spill onto his rather unknown bandmates, a chance he grabbed with gracious hands.  His voice may have faded with age, but such is compensated – at least partially – through his more obstinate, assertive lyrics that soundly match the band’s departure from all-out hard rock towards a more serious, a more grandiose arrangement.  “Prostitute” screams amongst an orchestral whirlwind of guitars and drums: “I told you when I found you all that amounts to is love that you’ve crippled for fortune and fame!”  “Shackler’s Revenge” remains even simpler, yet all the more stubborn and authoritative, crying, “Don’t ever try to tell me / how much you care for me / don’t ever try to tell me / how you are there for me,” before launching into an unyielding chorus: “I don’t believe there’s a reason / I don’t, I don’t believe it!”  This obdurate, serious brand of lyrics pervades into every song in the album, a culmination of the lengthy process of evolution of Axl’s libretto in Appetite.

Axl’s revolution has brought Gn’R to a new realm of creativity, where there is now no need for a group of young, high musical talents to unite and create the loudest, rawest album possible.  Slash’s extraordinary guitar playing may have been (perhaps unsatisfyingly) replaced by the more technically profound Robin Finck and Bumblefoot; Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum may have possessed a much more imposing appearance upon the stage than their successors that Gn’R fans may miss dearly; and modern methods of production may have erased any hopes of another all-out hard rock performance.  However, whatever has materialised as a result has constituted a musically fine piece, equipped with intensity and deep-seated obstinacy.  One must realise that this rendition of Gn’R is decidedly different from the Gn’R of old.  And from this realisation may the true appreciation of Gn’R II begin.

FINAL RATING: B

Well, it seems that I’ve already failed to keep my promises (I had said that I’d write a blog post every week), but I’ve returned at last to examine an album that’s interested me for the past few weeks.  Well, although Dig Out Your Soul is not Oasis in their most extraordinary manifestation, the album forges a commendable comeback effort from the Gallaghers and company.

Track Listing:

1. Bag It Up
2. The Turning
3. Waiting for the Rapture
4. The Shock of the Lightning (Best song)
5. I’m Outta Time
6. (Get Off Your) High Horse Lady (Worst song)
7. Falling Down
8. To Be Where There’s Life
9. Ain’t Got Nothin’
10. The Nature of Reality
11. Soldier On

Image credited to: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9d/Dig_out_your_soul.jpg

England have long been considered the homeland of the vast, respectable entity known as rock music.  Legends such as the Beatles, Queen, Led Zeppelin, the Who, and the Rolling Stones, among countless others had all transpired to be from the region, and those popular giants of the eighties and nineties very often cite their English counterparts as their inspirational heroes, as their so-called idols.  Such a giant is Oasis, who, for the most part, seemed superficially removed from the then-prominent glam rock scene that thrived during the late eighties; they couldn’t care less about up-and-coming grunge pioneers such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam either.  Instead, they stayed true to rock’s most original pioneers – they embezzled the most memorable Beatleisms and revered the Who’s live vigour.  Morning Glory?’s “Don’t Look Back in Anger” talks about “a revolution in my bed”, while the indelible Oasis anthem “Live Forever” is an Panglossian antithesis to Nirvana’s ever-gloomy grunge (best exemplified by their rather self-explanatory “I Hate Myself and I Want to Die”).  Admittedly, Oasis’ own eternal bout of Beatlemania had distinguished them and the whole then-newfangled Britpop movement from the rest of the music scene back then.

Thus, it should come to no surprise that Oasis’ newest album, Dig Out Your Soul, also possesses its fair share of British rock n’ roll influence.  Such certainly does not act as a vice to Gallagher and company’s collective product; Noel Gallagher’s respectable guitar, his brother Liam’s droning/shouting vocals (which is probably the only time such a union can ever come to play), and their less renowned bandmates, despite all of their excessive rock n’ roll admiration, forge an exquisite yet hard-pounding composition within Definitely Maybe and, to a lesser extent, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? However, the striking difference between the latter hallmarks of Britpop and the former is that the latter is Britpop and the former is rock n’ roll; the latter is original; the former, an illusory attempt at mimicry.

Don’t get me wrong; Oasis’ latest work is not terrible.  There are certain bits to Dig Out Your Soul that have been fine-tuned extremely well – for instance, lead single “The Shock of the Lightning” is in many ways the definitive Oasis song.  Equipped with pace, power, sheer energy, and a kickass Moonesque drum solo from Zak Starkey, “The Shock of the Lightning” must to be Oasis’ vigourous creation since “Morning Glory” and “Roll With It”.  However, for all of the lead single’s suitable vigour, Oasis then plods on in the same tested-and-unsuccessful fashion they have in their most recent albums: the march on in their perpetual quest for meaning.  Such a quest should be considered a sin for such devoted rock n’ roll fanatics as Oasis; I mean, the reason the whole genre was ridiculed, vilified, and ridiculously slandered by angry reviewers was for its stinging rawness and a lack of a great lyrical truth behind the grand scheme of things.  Should Oasis ever become successful at whatever they intended to do with “Waiting for the Rapture” or “The Turning”, they will do so with in a traitorous manner.

But thank God for morals: Oasis’ search for insinuating ballads and eloquent, slow-pace songs seems only a fraction of what Oasis really wants to be about.  Except for the post-Be Here Now-like half-rockers “To Be Where There’s Life” and “(Get Off Your) High Horse Lady” – to which I feel ashamed even to attach the tag “half-rockers” – Oasis seems to be attempting a return back to their glorious heyday, when their myopic adulation towards their legendary influences made them the unofficial People’s Band.  Even “Waiting for the Rapture”, for all of its so-called desperation for meaning and literary value, shares its bit of intensity that places Dig Out Your Soul above all else in Oasis’ post-Morning Glory? catalogue.

FINAL RATING: B