NEKOV – 16.5
Bend Sinister - Teacher 6 2 0.5 8.5
Bend Sinister - Seventeen 5.5 2 0.5 8
I love Deep Purple. I love this.
Every song I hear from them I like a little more than the one before; when do I break down and buy one of their records?
Yeah, that keyboard/drums intro to “Teacher” just screamed “Lord/Paice” to me, and while the rest cut new ground, it was a good start in my opinion. “Seventeen” didn’t really have the strong melody of “Teacher”, but it was still musically good; vocally it smacked a little too much of the Rush’s first album, which is both good and bad. This is a band I’ve heard a lot about and for a while now. A gentleman that posts here has been touting them since 2012 or so, and everything I hear I like. I think it might be time to buy into their catalogue a little bit. Thematically, you got close.
INDISCIPLINE – 14.5
Vandenberg – This Is War 4.5 2 0.5 7
Vandenberg – Waiting For The Night 5 2 0.5 7.5
If songwriting is an art, then this is somewhere between stick figures and finger painting.
I remember this being so much better.
I feel bad. “Burning Heart” was an MTV staple, and of course I’m familiar with Adje Van den Berg (if you haven’t already go out RIGHT NOW, and find “Starkers In Tokyo”, the acoustic record David Coverdale and Adrian did; it is unbelievably good). I was hoping this would be a win across the board, but unfortunately, it’s not. As I said (not about the tune, but the band itself), I just remember it being so much better. Waiting… is slightly better than the “…War”, but still. Music doesn’t HAVE to match the words; some of the best songs in the world have lyrics that are seriously ironic compared to the music (“The One I Love” by REM, “Every Breath You Take” by The Police), but having lyrics about “war” and music that might be about, oh, bubble gum, isn’t ironic, it’s just silly. All is not lost, since Adrian can play guitar like a mofo, but there’s a reason he left Bert Heerink to his own devices and joined up the Whitesnake machine. Thematically, though, I liked what you wrote about taking inspiration (funny story: my stepson threw a Halloween party a couple years ago, and one kid went as Marty McFly, and I swear to god, I wore his exact outfit to school just about every single day).
KINGSHMEGLAND - 18.5
Ben Folds Five – Battle Of Who Could Care Less 6.5 2 1 9.5
The Avett Brothers – No Hard Feelings 6 2 1 9
Never judge a book by it’s cover, especially when the cover shows a pretentious, ironic douchebag!
Incredibly moving; I can’t even make jokes about this.
Everything about Ben Folds screams “PRETENTIOUS HIPSTER DOUCHEBAG!” but I saw him on Live At Daryl’s House and my whole opinion changed. The guys the real deal, and he’s got great chops. He even asked Daryl to play a song from “Sacred Songs”, the basically forgotten album Daryl did with Robert Fripp (and forever jaded Daryl to the music business). This song was right along that line; the verses are sort of quippy, the lyrics slightly hipsterish (the Rockford Files IS cool, fucker!) but the chorus just takes this song into the stratosphere. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that McCartney himself was playing the bass on this. In terms of subject matter, that was a big part of my senior year and first year of college; knowing that I wanted more, that I didn’t want to be what we called a “townie”, but feeling conflicted about that. The second song, well, there’s not really much I can write to do it justice. That’s just a moving song that really sums it up nicely: without saying too much, I’ve had to work hard to make sure my circumstances didn’t get the better of me, and one of my biggest breakthroughs was just realizing that there just shouldn’t be any (metaphorical) hard feelings. This submission really moved me, and I am deeply thankful to King for that.
JINGLE.BOY – 15.5
Moon Safari – Too Young To Say Goodbye 5.5 2 0.5 8
Gowan – Criminal Mind 5 2 0.5 7.5
This is just f*****g excellent. But when did Joe Satriani join Toto?
I don’t know what to make of this; in five listens this is either going to be AWESOME, or, well, not.
“A Kid Called Panic” is better, but this is a good tune. I liked the vocal harmonies best; the verses were a shade too “Toto” for me (and that’s not a diss on Toto, but they are so good that sometimes the vocals seem relatively bland in comparison, and so are almost a distraction). Moon Safari is another band I might start digging into. I like what I hear. You dodged a bullet with the b-side. I should have hated this, since my big hurdle with Styx is the Broadway-esque nature of a lot of the latter-day DeYoung material, and this seems, in hindsight, like Laurence’s audition tape! (I swear, I didn’t find out until AFTER I wrote that that he did in fact use that song as part of his audition with Styx!) But it’s an interesting song. I can’t honestly say I had designs of being a lawyer when I graduated high school (doctor, actually) I get the idea and understand what you were going for.
Topic: Stadler's Roulette, 2.0: Singles A's and B's: We have a Champeen! (Read 47983 times)