Hi there, lovely reader.
1 – Kings of Leon – Whatever that new album is called: ‘Ehhhhhhhhh eh ehhh, sexy on fire. . .’ I find myself humming that every so often. It’s grand. That other single – Need Somebody, oh dear me, stop it. I can forgive a band selling out – these days to be huge you need to sell out, or so it seems. To become huge without selling out, you need to be tactical geniuses, or not care about being huge in the first place (or both? (i.e. Radiohead)). So KoL want to be huge. They want to be U2. That’s fine. I’ve no problem with that. The main reason I haven’t bothered listening to KoL #4 is an interview I read in State magazine, where Caleb Fallowbrain slated (harhar) albums #1 and #2. He said they make him sick, or something to that effect. In doing so he bit my hand – one of the hands that feeds him, or at least fed him when he was a nobody. Sure, the new songs might be musically more proficient, shinier, etc, but if he actually thinks they are better or more interesting than Molly’s Chambers, California Waiting, King of The Rodeo, Four Kicks and so on, then he is wrong. And anyway, when have you ever heard U2 slagging off Boy or War?
2 – Bon Iver – For Emma: Some of my friends told me this was “nice”. So in my head he is tomorrow’s Damien Rice. Damien Rice is my ninth favourite rice, after basmati, pilau, long-grain, Uncle Ben’s boil-in-the-bag, Glen, Condo-Lisa and brown. If you write an album for Emma, just give it to Emma.
3 – Fleet Foxes: I have no idea what this is, again, I was told it was “nice”, with a shrug and a raised eyebrow.
4 – Portishead – Turd: I never listened to them back in the day, so wasn’t excited about new material. Poor album art and title sealed the deal.
5 – TV on the Radio – Dear Science: I listened to their first album, which people raved about, and I thought it was like a poor-man’s Beck. Over-rated, un-memorable blah.
5a – Vampire Weekend: I’ve probably heard most of the album over the course of the year somewhere or other, but I don’t like it. A-Punk is good. But Mansard roof and the rest are intolerable. I saw them on Jools Holland and they sounded like frogs scratching a barrel. Did you know – most McDonald’s Drive-thru’s have mansard roofs? Also, mansard rhymes with Hansard, which is reason enough for me to give it a wide berth.
So maybe I have been missing out, missing the point, whatever. Who cares. I don’t see what the hurry is. If I had already liked them, or someone I know liked them and told me I would like them, or I thought I might like them, or indeed, if I was ever going to like them – I would have listened to them by now. . .
