Zakk Zielke - Super Srs

So I was just sent this album. Or I guess it's an EP. I've never heard of this band "Zakk Zickey" before but it was very highly recommended so I figured I'd give it a shot. Was I wrong in doing so? Maybe.

"Do I Even Have Eyes This Morning" is the first song, and in case you can't tell from the overly long title, it is some druggy shit. Sounds like that of Montreal band I had the displeasure of listening to around a week ago and reviewing. Drum machine, synthesizers and singing FUCKING EVERYWHRE. Any guitar? Of course not, this band is completely talentless.

"Laura Creepyhands Magic (Rainbow x2)" is some kinda Beatles shit, only with a guitar solo. I'm guessing the band brought in a session musician to play it for them since it's pretty complex and contains more than 3 notes.

"Kawaii Prince" is a simple disco song about having three colons or some gross shit. Yeah okay members of Zach Zilkey, I get it. You do drugs and listen to shitty old rock music from the '80s or whenever the Beatles last had a decent hit. Big whoop.

"(Whoa Whoa) Woe Is Me" is the fourth and final track, and it sports the shittiest lyrics on the whole album. This band wants the world to feel bad for them. I would if they hadn't just raped my ears. There's a nice little orchestral outro (which takes up like half the fucking song because it's like a minute long or some dum shit), but I'm sure it was all played on synthesizers since I'm sure no one in Sack Silkey has the talent required to play a violin or a sophisticated instrument like the cello.

Recommended for fans of shitty old music and shitty new music.

Final score:

4.3/10

You can listen to the whole thing here if for some fucked up reason you would ever want to do that.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Alright, so anyone who reads this blog knows how I feel about Arcade Fire. Terrible band, but of course I'm woken up today by the UPS guy banging on my door. He hands me this package with this cd in it and I'm like "fuck this, no" but there is a note attached saying they need the promotion and will pay me a large amount of money to review it, so here we go.

From the first song you already know you have a winner of an album. I mean, it has all the ingredients- whiny vocals, whiny lyrics and a whole fucking lot of reverb. Speaking of lyrics, here is a gem I managed to pick up while trying to tune the whole thing out

"I want to have a daughter while I'm still young

I want to hold her hand" - Gerard Butler

It's great that the world is so accepting of pedophiles these days, what with this band's mainstream success, the worldwide weepfest over Michael Jackson's death and Playboy's latest interview with Peewee Herman. That was actually sarcasm, by the way. These are some sick fucks and the world has truly gone to shit if they're allowed to actually live let alone get rich. I could maybe understand if Arcade Fire made good music, but I'm listening to this album right now, and that is most definitely not the case.

Oh shit. I'm like halfway through the album now. I felt like I was just listening to longest, least interesting song ever written. Like someone did some science and figured out how to push the limits of boring into XTREME new territory and this was the result.

So every song is pretty much the exact same fucking thing. It goes on for ever and ever and ever and ever and goddammit, go away now, Arcade Fire. Just go away and never come back. Yeah dude, I know you can make BIG EPIC SONGS, but you've been sitting here showing me the same trick over and over again. I was kind of impressed the first time, but now it kind of seems like you're just desperate for attention. I'm serious here man, do something else or I'm leaving.

And they do something else. It only takes 3 hours of album for them to do it, but dammit, it happens. "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" sounds like some '80s Cyndi Lauper synthpop shit (in addition to their BIG EPIC ROFL sound that they don't want to give up ever), which is nice.

Actually, I think the problem is this dude's voice. He needs to just stop singing. You hear that, Gerard Butler? Stop singing. Let that one chick sing from now on. You're not worth hearing for a straight hour. Sorry bro, no hard feelings.

Final Score

Turd/10

Concert Review - Barenaked Ladies @ Bank of America Pavilion 8/7/10

First, some back story:

The year was 2006, It was my first BNL concert and I was so excited. Halfway through the show I had to use the bathroom and couldn't put it off for another second. After the typical 20 minute wait, I was in the bathroom stall when I heard the band start playing "Call and Answer" with the audience going nuts after the first opening bars. I was wiping when they got the the "I'M WAAAARNIN YOU DON'T EVER DO THOSE CRAZY MESSED UP THINGS THAT YOU DO" part. Suddenly, the audience's screams of joy turned into screams of horror and pain. I finished up, washed my hands as quick as possible, and ran out to see what was the matter. What I saw was both the most horrible and glorious sight I have ever witnessed.

The band had finished playing the song and the entire venue was dead silent. I looked at across the room at the seats, and saw nothing but bloody, charred corpses. Everyone was dead, my parents included. I crawled to their seats on my hands and knees, sobbing uncontrollably. "HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN" I whimpered into the pant leg of my dead mother's jeans. "WHY GOD, WHY???" But this was not the work of God.

I looked up and saw a golden hammer, loosing itself from my father's cracked, broken-in skull. It flew into the air toward the stage. I looked up into the sky and saw thousands of the things, all seemingly being pulled to the same spot. I stood up.

Steven Page was standing center stage while the rest of the band packed up their equipment. His unnaturally large mouth seemed to be stuck open as the hammers flew towards him, shrinking as they got nearer and eventually disappearing down his throat. Stunned, I fell back, landing on my mother's body. I heard a snap and her head rolled down into my lap. I screamed and dropped it onto the floor. When it hit the ground, it crumbled into an ashy white dust. I stood up, tears streaming down my face, and stared at Page. Apparently my scream had gotten his attention, because he was staring at me as well. We stood there, looking into each other's mind's for what seemed like an eternity (though realistically was more like 30 seconds). Suddenly, he broke the gaze, turned around and went backstage, maybe to have a glass of water before getting back onto the tour bus.

When he was gone from view I fainted, hitting my head hard on the concrete floor.

I woke up a couple days later in a hospital. It took me months to recover mentally and deal with the trauma of seeing my mother's burnt, severed head grinning up at me from my lap, but I'm fine now.

My therapist always used to ask me if I hated Mr. Page now, after all he's done to me and my family, but my answer is always the same: He may have killed my parents and an entire building full of other people's parents, but hatred is one thing I do not feel for him.

Here is a list of what I feel for Mr. Page:

1. Fear
2. Respect

So 4 years, 153 therapy sessions and 2 foster families after my last experience with Barenaked Ladies in a live environment, I decided that it was time again to face the band that killed my parents. Why now? Well, Steven Page was finally gone and there was no real threat of bodily harm or death to be found in the new four piece. Plus I liked their new album and figured it would be worth the risk regardless.

My foster mother and I were on our way to the venue an hour and a half early when we saw, standing outside a restaurant a couple blocks down from the Pavilion, Ed Robertson in his civilian clothes. I notified my foster mother that we were in the presence of a Music King and she didn't believe me until some other chick told her "YEAH THAT IS HIM TEE HEE" or something along those lines.
Anyway, he was with a friend or something, and when I got closer he looked at me and I could see the hate in his eyes. He leaned down to his friend and whispered "Oh shit, it's that guy who said Steve's single is better than most of All In Good Time. Let's get outta here." I know this because I am a master of lipreading from all the charity work I've done with the deaf. Anyway, I considered approaching him, but thought it best to just leave him alone while he's in such an agitated state. He walked towards the venue with everyone else following. Not in a stalker way, but more in a everyone's-going-to-the-same-place kind of way.

My foster mother did manage to get a picture of his back though. That WAS done in a stalker sort of way. The picture came out alright though. They could probably use it for cover art for a new album or single



He went around to the back of the venue to do drugs or have sex with multiple women or whatever they do to warm up before shows. I thought about following him and when we were all alone demanding either $20 of the ridiculous ticket price back or a haircut. My hair is pretty long and if he didn't have any money on him it would work because a decent haircut is usually somewhere in around $20 anyway. I didn't do any of that though. I entered the Bank of America Pavilion. From the front. Like a Real American Hero.

The first chick who played was alright. Until she did the Radiohead cover anyway. She did a great job and she has a great voice, but goddamn I hate Radiohead. I actually just now found out that she is black. A black person opening for Barenaked Ladies? This must be a first. Progress!

The dude who played next was pretty bad. What's he goin for, some kind of Bob Dylan/Neil Young/Lynyrd Skynyrd thing? Boring as shit. And he just kept going. And going. And going. I felt like running the mile from my shitass seat to the stage, jumping on, and setting his long hippie hair on fire.

After he was done douchin it up all was quiet and peaceful once more in the land of the Bank of America Pavilion. There was a projector on the walls with messages from people attending the show. I texted "herp derp" to it, and, unsurprisingly, it never showed up, making room for more important messages such as "I ate an entire raccoon once" and "Hiiiiii =D".

8 hours of Tetris later, Barenaked Ladies took the stage. They opened with "Who Needs Sleep" which is a weird opener, but I'm glad I got to finally hear it. I'm not gonna do some kind of track by track review, but highlights were:

- Easy
- How Long
- Another Heartbreak
- Sound of Your Voice
- Let There Be Light
- Four Seconds (sounds badass live)
- Alcohol

Last song they did was Brian Wilson, and while they do still sound like a BNL cover band on that one, it was pretty good. Not a trainwreck like some other live videos I've seen.

It was a pretty great show overall. Worth the $60? Maybe. But are the BNL sweatshirts they were selling at the merch booth worth $50? Fuck no. And AIGT is $25 on vinyl? I could buy the album 2 1/2 times on compact disc for that much. And what else do I get out of it? Bigger cover art? The cover art is just kind of them standing around looking serious. I don't need that that big for $25.

of Montreal - False Priest

Alright so today I got this thing in the mail. It's an album called False Priest by a band called of Montreal. What is of Montreal other than French-Canadians and their filthy gravy-soaked french fries anyway? Anyway, I opened the box and the first thing I noticed was the album cover. I could tell just by looking at it that this band was gonna be one of those "hey let's just make a giant clusterfuck of noise and call it psychadelic" bands. I wasn't wrong.

The album opens with "I Feel Ya Strutta" which I guess is some kind of wigger slang for something sexual. Not sure, but the song is like some kind of Bee Gees disco shit. There's a reason why disco died, of Montreal, and that reason is BECAUSE IT'S SHIT. I can't stand all these hipster bands trying to revive these demons that their rock n' rolling ancestors managed to finally destroy. Pisses me off.

"Our Riotous Defects" (oooh, wacky song titles! So psychadelic!) is a giant disco clusterfuck with an annoying falsetto chorus of "SHE'S JUST A CRAAAAZY GIRL" with verses that consist of lead singer Kevin Barnum talking like one of those bitches from that Clueless movie (it was on TV one night and I was drunk and couldn't find the remote, OK?). I think it's supposed to be funny, but it's really not. Not at all.

One thing I noticed on my first listen of this album was that Kevin Barnum does not know how to write songs. He lays down obnoxious, funky instrumentals and then talks over them. I'd say it's close to rapping, but that would imply that there is some kind of rhythm in there, which there is not. A good example of this is "Godly Intersex" which has to be one of the most dull things I have ever heard. OH MAN, LISTEN TO THOSE ECHOEY VOCALS. 10/10. Just kidding, you suck.

The highlight of the first half of the album is "Coquette Coquette," a song that, while pretty bad, is better than the rest of the songs because it actually has some guitar in it. Unfortunately, the break from shitty white boy faux-disco doesn't last very long, and you're treated to another delightful forty-something minutes of samey falsettos and synthesizers.

Actually, the whole rest of the album has 0 standout tracks (other than Sex Karma, which only gets a mention because it features the sister of Beyonce, an actually good singer and songwriter on it, doing most of the work).

The worst part of the album is the very last part. The "epic closer" as I'm sure most hipsters will call it, "You Do Mutilate?", ends with about a minute of Kevin Barnum preaching about God and Jesus and how bad religion is like this is some big, shocking news. Like God-fearing Christians and Muslim extremists are going to be listening to incredibly gay indie disco albums. Thanks Kevin Barnum, you really showed them and changed the world with your words and melodies. Shit, did I say melodies? What I meant was BULLSHIT.

Final Score:

4.3/10

(Extra 2 points added for Solange being on it).