Sorry for the late post, it’s been a busy week with finals and I wanted to wait to put this post up until I’d reviewed the cds I had since it’s my last blog post of the year! This one’s got some substance though, as I reveal the winners of my Indie awards(nominees listed in my previous post) along with some new reviews of albums by The Black Keys and Robert Pollard!
Winners
Best Indie Folk Record of the Year:
Fleet Foxes- Helplessness Blues
Best Indie Folk Song of the Year:
Beirut- A Candle’s Fire
Best Indie Rock Album of the Year:
Yuck- Yuck
Best Indie Rock Song of the Year:
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks- Senator
Best Indie Pop Album of the Year:
Cults- Cults
Best Indie Pop Song of the Year:
Family of the Year- Chugjug
Best New Artist: Cults
Album Reviews
Quick note on my rating scale cause it’s odd.
- a 6.4 or below is 1 star
- 6.5-7.4 is 2 stars
- 7.5-8.4 is 3 stars
- 8.5-9.4 is 4 stars
- 9.5+ is 5 stars
So the majority of albums rated wind up in the 7.5-8.4 range
The Black Keys- El Camino 8.9/10
Their previous release got them national attention, but the success of this record will say a lot about if the Black Keys become one of the main Indie bands. The duo said they would be trying to return more to their original sound on this one but it’s still not as blues rock as their earlier releases, and I think that’s a good thing. The earlier stuff is enjoyable, but it was less consistent than the last 2 albums and doesn’t reach the same audience. El Camino brings a ton of great tracks to the table and with all the publicity they’ve been trying to give it you have to figure they’re bound to be rewarded in recognition. At the least I’m sure I’ll be hearing plenty of “Lonely Boy” in the upcoming months.
Robert Pollard- The Kids Eat It Up 7.9/10
I’m amazed that this album was made. Robert Pollard is the frontman of Guided By Voices, a big indie band in the 1990′s and 2000′s who’s probably best known for releasing an obscene amount of material, but this is overdoing it. It’s a compilation album of Pollard’s best songs from 2010-2011. A compilation album that covers a two year period, and contains songs by pollard in five different bands/acts and covering 10 different albums. So what’s the end product? Your typical Robert Pollard album where he struck gold a couple times, sounds awful at others, and the 30 song album gets crammed into an hour. Dont view me as a Pollard hater, I just think he releases to much material that it ends up bringing down the great stuff he has released. That being said I am looking forward to hearing Let’s Go Eat the Factory where Pollard is back with the original GBV lineup, the one that released Alien Lanes and Bee Thousand, release date for that album is January 1, 2012.
Get Set Go- Fury Of Your Lonely Heart 7.2/10
This album just didn’t offer that much for me, the vocals can annoy me a bit(sounded a bit like Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio singing in a less energetic fashion) but what really bugged me while listening to it was some of the simplicity in concepts. Like the background chorus in My Old Bones when you hear “Everybody dies someday, so whatcha gonna do?” or the opening lines in Stare at the Sun which read “I don’t ever want to die, I don’t see why I can’t live forever”. It’s a concept that relates to high school students more than the rest of the population, especially in the way they’re just bluntly stated. Not to many good songs present here, and the ones that came close had expletives that would block them from radio play.
You do realize that R. Pollard’s ‘Kids Will Eat It Up’ isn’t really an album, right? It’s a just sampler, sent out to radio stations so that they don’t have to wade through the multiple albums he’s released over the past two years. Other than the copies that went to radio stations, there are none for mass consumption; the public can order copies from iTunes for something like nine bucks–again, so they don’t have to dig through all the stuff released for the hardcore fan set.
If you don’t want the CD, by the way, I’ll gladly take it off your hands.
I’m aware it’s a compilation, it doesn’t stop the fact that it’s ridiculous that they can make a compilation over a two year period. He’s basically averaging a new album every 2 months between his projects. Also I do want the CD(though I don’t keep it regardless), I chose to review it over others because I like Pollard and I’ve given a recommendation to put it in rotation because I want to play some of the tracks on the radio.