Each time I listen to Whole Wheat Bread, there is a complete shift in my opinion of them. I go from really being very annoyed by them to quite liking them and back again with each listen.
They use a rather familiar mix of rock and rap with a twist of punk in there to add to the flavour. They’re like two electromagnets, one containing rock music and the other containing rap music, with an alternating current of punk that keeps switching the polarities of the magnets so that one minute they are stuck firmly together creating a good mix of sound, then the next minute the polarities change and the magnets fly apart, slightly injuring passers by. It’s a strange blend of likes and dislikes that works intermittently.
At times they sound like they’re trying to be Skindred, and failing, ‘Throw Your Sets Up’ is a song that has this similarity and every time I hear it, I have to turn off Whole Wheat Bread and go listen to Skindred. Other times though, they are quite original and entertaining.
I just keep flip flopping about whether I actually like to listen to the album, and it’s not even that some of the songs are good and the rest is just filler, the same song can have very different reactions each time.
Whole Wheat Bread cross more genres than is first apparent. They have elements from Rock, Rap, Punk, Pop and most of the already established interjecting genres. It’s actually quite an eclectic mix, and is a lot more subtle and varying than is first apparent.
”I Can’t Think’ for example has some very punky undertones but has large sections of rap in there and it works very well. The singer, Nasty Nigga Fleetwood, has a nice raspy roundness to his voice that fits itself to all components of his vocals and doesn’t fall short at any point and I think this is what carries the album through the connecting genres. This is the point where other bands that try to cross the genres fail, but Whole Wheat Bread seem to remain solid throughout.
Pretty funky hardcore punk music to make you jump about like you’ve got a bomb shoved up your backside. The album is just full of energy, like a child on speed, this is the perfect album if you need to get the blood pumping and the adrenalin. The bad thing about this side effect is that if you’re sat in a dark room, with not enough room to move, then it will make you very fidgety, which is not what you want if you’re locked in a cupboard, for example, so this is not the album for you if those are your circumstances.
If you are, however, in a wide open space, and want to jump about, sweating on each other, maybe spilling alcoholic drinks, then there are few albums that would suit you better than this one.
The music has a nice consistency to is that causes it to flow nicely through the barrage of punky anger without it feeling like you’ve been blasted in the face with a water cannon. There’s also the fact that it feels very fun, it’s that halfway stage between rebellion and fun, where you’re still rebelling, but you’re being sensible about it.
I think you’d be hard pushed to find anyone under the age of thirty who couldn’t get some enjoyment from this album.
The only thing about the album, is that there’s not enough variety in the songs, because while I enjoy all the fun and excitement, I have very little stamina, and get tired very easily, but this album doesn’t give me any time to rest. It’s exhausting.
Pop punk is a genre that stops you ageing. Offspring, who should be 80 years old now, are still 21. So a band that came out before they had hair on their balls are doomed to be so for the rest of their life, or until they grow up and become boring (like Blink 182).
McFly, while being the better of the two pre-pube pop punk bands did lose a lot of credibility when covering Queen. They still are just filled to the brim with childish charm and fun, like a young Cousin at a family party that wants to sing a song for everyone, and you can’t help but encourage the poor thing.
Now I know that I’m not the target audience for this band, and, should I admit among my peers that I listen to the band and don’t puke up, they may put me in a big wicker man and set me on fire. I do still very much enjoy the album, if still in a slightly ironic way.
The worst songs on the album, are the ones where they try and be grown up and sincere. ‘POV’ is one such song and it really ruins my enjoyment of the album. Again, bringing it back to the Cousin simile, when (s)he’s finished performing and succeeding in making everyone happy, they go and throw a strop and ruin the rest of the day with their misbehaviour, that’s what McFly do with their ‘meaningful’ songs.
Thankfully, they quickly return to making thirteen year olds pogo about like beads on a trampoline.
The album is quite short, so you can fling it on, let it make you feel good and turn it off again before anyone finds out.
This album has also been given away free with the Daily Mail, and so at least old, small minded racists can listen to the music for free!
Overall, this is an album to steal from your kid sister when she gets bored of it.
Listen to this album: When you feel angry at grown up stuff.
74%
Extracts from ‘Do Ya’, ‘Smile’, ‘Corrupted’ and ‘The Last Song’
This album has all of the elements of skate punk, eccept for it has all of the good bits taken out. It’s far too slow, it’s far too flat and it just insults me.
The only previous work that I can clearly recall by Alkaline Trio, is their first two singles, ‘Stupid Kid’ and ‘Private Eye’ and I think these are really good songs, and I seem to remember them being really good in the early naughties, but this album is tired and grey.
We need to wait until the fifth track to hear an ounce of energy from any of the songs, this is not acceptable. The rest of album is stuffed full of love songs are ballads with very slight rock undertones.
I haven’t heard anything that they have done since ‘From here to infirmary’, so, this mediocrity may have been a long time coming and the current fans of the band may already know what they are getting themselves into, but for me, it was a huge disappointment.
This album is not even a smack on the arm, (they were never a smack in the face).
Listen to this album: While ice-skating on your own, at night.
Rating: 61%
Extracts from ‘Calling all skeletons’, ‘I found away’, ‘Live young, die fast’ and ‘Love love, kiss kiss’
The Ting Tings are a band that I had heard in passing and disregarded as annoying, but listening to the album it’s actually a lot of fun and I have totally rethunk my perception of them. Although they are still a bit annoying.
It’s simple, and nothing particularly new, but they are unashamed of doing something that’s fun and a bit stupid, but still has integrity.
Lead singer, Katie White sounds like she’s been educated to the age of 11, and then let loose in a theme park and made to write music. She also sounds like she can’t really form words properly and that the time she’s singing the words is the first time she’s seen them, but it’s an innocence you can’t really dislike, but at the same time, you don’t want to have to deal with it all the time.
It’s like when you’re looking after someone elses child and they’re chatting all the time and you humour the kid, and it’s okay, but if you actually had to deal with it all the time, it would get old, fast.
There is a sufficient level of diversity in the album, to keep your attention from one song to the next, and although the surface moves around throughout the album, it retains the foundations of the music throughout.
The best songs on the album are in the first half. They are catchy and fun and amusing, but ultimately annoying. Whereas the last part of the album is tedious and lazy, but not as annoying.
Listen to this album: Pogoing in quicksand.
Rating: 76%
Extracts from ‘That’s not my name’, ‘Fruit Machine’ and ‘We started nothing’
First off, you need to bear in mind that this is a compilation album, made up of songs that have previously been written, but have not been included on any other release by the Dresden Dolls. So surely, they aren’t as good as the songs that were actually picked for album release. You would be mostly correct.
I became obsessed for a short time, (a couple of weeks) with their first album, when it was released in 2003, and I think it contains a ton of great songs on it, it’s dark, it’s entertaining and it’s clever. ‘No Virginia’ succeeds less on all accounts, it’s brighter, it’s less entertaining and just not as good. I’ve been listening to it quite a lot over this week and can’t remember a single lyric from any of the songs. Compared to the likes of ‘Coin Operated Boy’ where I haven’t heard the song since about 2004, I can still remember the song clearly.
‘No Virginia’ is said to be a companion to the 2006 album ‘Yes Virginia’, but at the time, the album passed my by, so cannot comment.
There are some good songs on the album, but due to the nature of the album, they are as good as the worst songs on the other albums. These good songs stick out like sore thumbs on the album, and you can tell in the first 15 seconds of each song if it’s a good song. ‘Pretty in Pink’ is probably the best song on the album, really bringing in all those previously mentioned attributes and using them positively.
I think the reason I don’t like the album as much, is many of the songs seem to be less about the lyrics and vocal style and more about the whole sound, where it was the singing that I really liked about the Dresden Dolls, this time, the voice sinks down and gets smothered by all the other sounds.
Listen to this album: While wearing cabaret style make-up.
Rating: 70%
Extracts from ‘Dear Jenny’, ‘The Mouse and the Model’, ‘Lonesome Organist Rapes Page Turner’ and ‘Pretty in Pink’
‘Coin Operated Boy’ (from the album ‘The Dresden Dolls’)
Having read the 3 step guide to singing modern indie, Santogold realises she read the copy for men.
This is quite a confusing album because she sets out to break in to a genre very much dominated by white people and fails very badly with it, although when it comes to the songs which are more reggae and hip hop influenced, they are very good. Even though she says she “has made a point of not performing R&B or rap like other “brown girls”,saying she is “not like Ciara.” Wiki
These are some of the best songs on the album, and it also sounds a bit pretentious, why can’t she just do it and not mention race?
The indie based songs are bad, it sounds forced and not very good. It’s like the male singer of some naff indie band has had his balls chopped off. Every song that isn’t grouped into this genre is exceptionally good.
‘Shove it’ which has some reggae sounding influences is very enjoyable, ‘Creator’ which is very hip hop had me dancing in my seat and ‘My Superman’ which sounds more like something Goldfrapp would produce is lovely.
Overall, this album is good once you cut out the indie bits, all the other stuff is really very good. Some interesting influences are brought in to play in the album and more than a couple of times i was jigging away to her tunes.
While trying to pic some samples to put below here, I found myself wanting to put most of the songs on, so that goes to show that there must be a good few worthy of putting up., I was just very put off by the indie.
Listen to this album: Covering your ears when she tries to do indie.
Rating: 80%
Extracts from ‘Shove It’, ‘Say Aha’, ‘Creator’ and ‘My Superman’
Like being put in a blender that’s been hooked up to blend in time with the music.
This, I think is probably the best album to come out this year, so far. It is utterly fantastic. I had a couple of this week’s releases on my mp3 player, on shuffle and ‘Crank it up’ came on and I immediately went back to the start of the album and played it through. There aren’t many albums that I’ll listen to on the way home and be rushing home just so I can write about it.
It’s like a hardcore mix of Dizzee Rascal and Mindless Self Indulgence. It has a real sense of dynamism that really draws you into the music. The mixture distorted simplistic drum patterns to the synth and the guitar, all overlain by a very skilled lyricist who’s not afraid to be loud, this is a very talented band that deserves your support.
This album, brilliant as it is, is not without fault. The songs ‘Mr Misfortune’ is a real thorn in the foot of this album, really being a let down to itself. It’s like the kid at school who’s rubbish at everything and nobody really wants to work with it, so it ends up working with the teacher.
The song, ‘Wait for you’ start off as though it could be Mr Misfortune’s best friend, but drags itself out of the pit of despair. It’s just that it’s a much slower song and in relation to the other songs, it seems really out of place, but on the second listen, you expect it more and it comes as less of a shock to the system, letting you enjoy the merits of the song, rather than compare it to the others.
This band are one of those that you can tell that their live performance is going to be awesome by listening to the album, and as I got home today, I immediately checked out their tour dated to see if they were playing close to me, and they are. So I am happy.
Listen to this album: In a dirty hole in the ground in the middle of a city.
It really confuses me when I listen to an album that is very well performed and contains some very good music, but it just doesn’t inspire me.
Hardcore Punk is one of those genres that has a small margin between brilliant and very poor, and this album is very good, but it’s quite formulaic and I think it’s this that causes me to be less than excited about the album. Maybe it’s also because I’m lying in bed, at 10:50am and this isn’t the correct position to be listening to the album. I can imagine loving the album if I heard it performed live at a rock festival.
Another complaint about the album is the same complaint most people have about Formula 1 racing, that it kicks off at 200mph and goes round and round at that speed until the end and nothing much happens. This is true up to the tracks, ‘Bastard Waltz’ and ‘Sorceress’ which is like the pit-stop of the album. These tracks happen and suddenly there’s lots of excitement going on and people are racing all over the place and there’s lots of change and variety and fun.
After these two songs, it goes a bit bland again, until the last three songs, which again pick up and take us to the end of the album. This kind of trickery, to end the album on a high, tries to make us regard the album as better than it was and make up for the slightly uninspiring rest of the album. This trickery doesn’t work on me. I see through your lies.
This album is on par. It should have been at least a birdie.
Listen to this album: While angry.
Rating: 77%
Extracts from ‘Deathsmarch’, ‘Bastard’s Waltz’, ‘Sorceress’ and ‘Lucifer’s Rocking Chair’
Techno-metal-punk-type stuff all boxed in a small explosive package that is left in a bin in a train station.
I find it strange reviewing an album of a band that I have liked for a while. I become very biassed and want to just rave about the album. I also end up just comparing the album to other albums by the same artist and become very objective about it.
MSI’s style is very unique and contains big drums with keyboards, punk guitars and the very unique vocal style of Jimmy Urine.
MSI are one of my very favourite bands and you definitely need to hear them and also see them live. I saw them live and it blew my mind, they are just so animated and fun and entertaining. But this isn’t about the gig, it’s about their new album. It’s just important not to take MSI too seriously.
The first song introduces everything I would expect from an MSI album. It’s loud and lewd and brash. It makes me very excited and I start to perspire. After this song I wonder what happened. ‘Evening Wear’ is weak and melodic and it’s not very good. We then go into a rhythm of one on, one off until ‘Get it up’ which is just abismal. ‘Get it up’ may not only be the low point of this album, but the low point of the entire album. It’s quite simply an awful song.
Then we get to ‘Revenge’ and suddenly, out of the ashes of a crumpled, weak version of a band that I love comes a ten armed monster attacking me and ripping my head off. Songs 7-15, quite literally blew my socks off, so as far as I’m concerned, MSI owe me some new socks.
Why they couldn’t be this good for the whole album is beyond me, but all I know is that the first 6 tracks fade into my distant memories as I am filled from toe to head with a mist of love for a band that I was begining to doubt and I’m sorry for this.
The final song is a bit wierd and contains a number of interludes and strange singing bits. This is like a little extra bit of nonsense that bares little relation to the rest of the album, but is interesting nonetheless.
Overall, there are a couple of weak points in this album, and I’m probably a little over sensitive about it, becauase I love the album so much, but don’t let me put you off.
Listen to this album: With big comedy boots on.
Rating: 78%
Extracts from ‘Never Wanted To Dance’, ‘Evening Wear’, ‘Get It Up’, ‘Revenge’ and ‘Mastermind’
