I grew up listening to Black Flag and my favorite incarnation by far was the pre-Rollins, pre-Reyes, pre-Cadena (on vocals) era; the Keith Morris era. Morris, before leaving to form the Circle Jerks, was angry, passionate, and arguably their best singer, although I’m sure many will disagree with that statement. Tracks like “Fix Me” and “Nervous Breakdown” are as much a part of my youth as any other band. Hell, my favorite skateboard section of all time is Jim Greco’s part in Misled Youth and he skated to “Fix Me.”

Until a few years ago, the idea of a Black Flag reunion was preposterous, let alone that the band would re-form as two separate entities; the Ginn-Reyes collaboration which took on the Black Flag name and the FLAG collaborative featuring Keith Morris, Dez Cadena and Chuck Dukowski. While I did not get to see Black Flag, I was able to see FLAG, in all their primordial glory.

My expectations were high and I kind of approached the show with nervous trepidation. I didn’t really expect them to deliver to be honest. What I got was more than I could have ever asked for. Morris was fierce and played with his heart on fire, as did the other members of the band. Their energy and excitement was palpable and spread like a wild, contagious fire. They didn’t play the tracks of yesteryear. They blitzed them. They destroyed them. They HURT those songs.

And Dez even got to sing! And they even played some of the Rollins and Reyes tracks! And it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen! Simply put, it was a special night to be a fan of punk rock and a special night for those of us who finally got to see a band that defined our youth and inspired us all. They secured their place in the punk pantheon of greats. They lived up to the hype.

Mac McGuire

Mohawk Place's Last Waltz: Night 2 @ Mohawk Place in Buffalo, NY, January 12th

Any other year, seeing Spiritualized, a bucket list band of mine every since hearing "Ladies and Getlemen...," would have topped my list. They were devastatingly good at the Waiting Room. But Mohawk Place doesn't close every year. I won't rehash my memories of the place (its been done enough), but the venue's final night was a special experience like nothing I will ever be a part of again. All of my Buffalo music heroes were in one room, drinking every last drop of booze that old bar had, shedding tears that I didn't know were in a few of them, and recalling years of memories that could never be replicated. 

And the music just never ended. I stepped foot in Mohawk around 7pm to the sounds of disbanded Buffalo greats the Thermidors and left just after 5am with my ears ringing from the Mark Norris led power pop heroes Girlpope. Between an Old Sweethearts reunion I never thought I would get, my first experience with Semi-Tough(!), and sets from Chylde, Failures' Union and other relics of Mohawk's past, the night was as close to perfect as you can get in Buffalo. 


Tom Dennis
Captured Tracks Showcase @ The Parish(SXSW) in Austin, TX, March 16th

On the last night of SXSW, I saw a tour de force showcase put on by Captured Tracks at The Parish in Austin. With sets from Naomi Punk, The Soft Moon, Chris Cohen, Mac DeMarco, Widowspeak, DIIV, and Beach Fossils, the show was the ideal finale to an exhausting week of music. Chris Cohen brought each track from Overgrown Path into its cool blue light, Mac DeMarco was slightly less of a knucklehead than I’d imaged he would be live, and Beach Fossils sparked a hiccuping dance-pit, which they kept stoked ’til 2am. Extracted from the rock club, I hummed "Home" by DIIV in an attempt to drown out the waning madness of Sixth Street as I navigated my way to the nearest bus stop. 


Scott Mancuso
Okkervil River @ The Haunt in Ithaca, NY, September 27th We rode our bikes from the motel on the edge of town to the middle of Ithaca. There were no "sharrows." We went to a bar and ordered beers and then we went to another bar and ordered more beers. It was a Friday night and there were a lot of professors and a lot of students. We went to a dive bar with a rooster logo where a middle-aged ex-military bartender appeared ten minutes after we walked in. She served us more beers. We rode our bikes over the train tracks to the Haunt and drank more beers. Okkervil River played their instruments very well and Will Sheff sang very well. It made me happy. It made a man in front of us with a green shirt that said "Paddy's" on it even happier. "Paddy" drank a lot of beers. Sometimes he drank half-empty beers that were just sitting on the edge of the stage. Sometimes he put his arm around girls that he didn't know, and they didn't like it at all, but that didn't slow Paddy down. I went to the bathroom after the show and Paddy was there and he asked me, "so what's your deal." I think he meant it to be friendly but I didn't know what to say, and I didn't have a deal, so I just shrugged and left. We rode our bikes back into town and I realized that my back tire was flat. We stopped. We drank whiskey in a bar in a basement and then we tried to go back to the rooster bar and then we learned that, in Ithaca, bars close at 1 in the morning. That's why they all had to drink so fast and so early and ask what the deal was because they were running out of time.


Tom Etu
buffaBLOG Summer Party @ Duke's in Buffalo, NY, August 10th

Some people remembered bits and pieces the next day. Others needed verbal cues and a bit of shoving before it all came swimming back into their recollection. Jack Topht enraged, elated, irritated and enlightened us. A beach ball and other inflatables were passed around in a massive game of "keep it up!" Some in attendance probably played their own version of 'keep it up' that night, but that's irrelevant. The Malones killed it, and bass player Elliot Douglas was feeling it so hard that he jumped offstage. A fellow blogger guarded one of the band's lead singers (name undisclosed) while he urinated into a garbage can outside DBGB's. Shit got weird at the buffaBLOG Summer Party.

“Will you still love me, when I am no longer young and beautiful/Will you still love me when I got nothing but my aching soul?” Del Rey asks throughout the chorus. If Gatsby is the person to whom she (as Daisy Buchanan) is posing this question to, the answer is most certainly yes. But Del Rey (Buchanan) doesn’t wait around for the answer, and the following lines, “I know you will/I know you will” are the same kinds of assumptions that got us into the Great Depression in the first place.

The video itself is stimulating, to say the least. Lots of dark, shadowy orchestra shots give the already-haunting song an even more ominous feel, and Del Rey manages to be sultry, slutty, and classy all at once; you know, the way she always is. It’s the best song and video to emerge from an over-hyped soundtrack, and my advice is to enjoy Lana Del Rey while you can because when she is no longer young and beautiful it’s unclear what kind of person she’ll become, especially if she’s dealing with an aching soul.

I’ve listened to Wildlife’s new album, ...On The Heart, approximately 13 times in the past 24 hours. And I think it’s pretty fantastic, which is actually kind of disappointing, because I had a great intro totally lined up in the event that it sucked: “I’d rather listen to hyenas fight over the groaning body of a dying moose in wildlife than listen to ...On The Heart by Wildlife ever again.” The intro would have been probably been edited a few times, but that was the gist. Why am I explaining myself? It doesn’t matter, because the album was great.

...On The Heart gets off to a tough start with the opening song, “If It Breaks,” and I found myself sitting there thinking "Well fuck, I’m probably going to have to use the word 'atmospheric' a bunch of times in this review," which is a problem because let’s be honest, the word “atmospheric” is a bit of a cop-out and is generally used to describe and/or attempt to make sense of a bunch of random sounds trying to come together. If you come across the word “atmospheric” on the internet and you are not reading about the weather or converting to Scientology, close your computer, place it gently on the ground and walk away.

                

The second track of the album, “Born To Ruin,” is more or less forgettable, but the album really picks up on the third track, “Bad Dream.” It’s just a five-minute long explosion of energy; it might actually be how the universe was formed. “Bad Dream,” is a good example of how I want this type of music to sound: upbeat, relentless, and constantly changing pace. Let’s equate this to driving, shall we? I’ve been comparing a lot of albums to The Temper Trap recently, so hey, why not beat a dead horse into the ground or whatever that saying is? TTT (as the cool kids abbreviate it) was pretty decent, but the beats and melodies never really broke the speed limit, so to speak. It kind of just rolled along at 55 on cruise control the entire time. ...On The Heart, on the other hand, hugs the turns tightly and totally guns it on the flat stretches. It’s an exciting album.

Time and time again, I found myself subconsciously nodding my head in approval of each song. I kept thinking "Yes, I’m very okay with this." A good example is the beginning of the fourth track, “One For The Body.” It starts with a steady drum beat, and gradually picks up pace as the guitar and synthesizer join the party. The synthesizer stops as the vocals begin: “We’ll be waiting when the Rapture comes/And you and I will lay there arm and arm,” and you get the sense that the entire beat is going to slow down and hide beneath the lyrics. But no, that doesn’t happen. It immediately picks back up and races off quickly, and as that’s happening, a moment of musical perfection occurs at the 53 second mark when backup vocals enter right on cue. It’s a brilliant first minute.

The final track, “Two Hearts Race,” is, with extreme bias, the best closing song on an album since “God of Wine” off Third Eye Blind. It’s a slightly-80’s-sounding song, but despite my hatred towards all things 80’s, I loved this song. Maybe it was the passion and the frantic nature of the final half of the song that did it for me. So wait, does this mean I actually like the 80’s? Because now that I think about it, I can’t think of an 80’s song without passion and a frantic way about it. Anyway, “Two Hearts Race,” climaxes with a minimalistic but powerful guitar solo that literally made me turn and look at my speakers, as if…well, as if they were trying to get my attention.

So let’s recap. The pacing of the album is wonderful, there is a moment of musical perfection, it sounds better than hyenas eating a moose, and it caused a major personal musical crisis. Is there anything else you can ask for in an album? 

Grade: A-

Last summer I discovered The Black Angels, listened the hell out of their unbelievable first album Passover, and watched them play an awesomely messy set at the Town Ballroom. They made the lovably odd choice of concluding that set with a lengthy sitar solo, performed by Rishi Dhir, who is the lead singer of Elephant Stone. A few months ago, after I heard through The Black Angels’ Facebook page that Elephant Stone was releasing a self-titled LP on February 5^th, I made the decision that it was going to be great.

Now, we all know how expectations work. It’s very rare that something comes along and exceeds them; more often than not, we are let down. That’s usually on us. We’re guilty of setting the bar too high, and then judging something and calling it a disappointment if it fails to reach that level. I’m going to use Band of Horses as an example. They developed a tight-knit, if relatively small following after their first two albums, and expectations were high for their third. When Infinite Arms came out a few years later, fans pretty much thought it sucked. The same thing happened this past year when they released Mirage Rock, and now some fans are saying they’re done. I happen to think Mirage Rock and to a lesser extent Infinite Arms are very good albums, but that doesn’t matter: They will forever be judged by the height at which they initially set the bar. This is not unusual. This happens all the time.

What’s interesting, and how this relates to Elephant Stone, is that my expectations for this album were based not on an opinion I’d formed myself based on Elephant Stone’s previous work, but rather on the word of an entirely different band that I have no real connection to. The Black Angels play very dark, psychedelic music, and The Black Angels told me to listen to Elephant Stone. So when I listened to Elephant Stone and noted that there were way too many songs that would fit in perfectly if played in the background of a summer-love montage, I checked Twitter to see if there were any accounts of pigs flying and I checked Gawker to find a report of an asteroid heading right for Earth. Surely the world must be ending if The Black Angels, a band that recently came to Buffalo and played one set without an encore and wrapped-up the night with a ten-minute sitar solo; a band that, in other words, doesn't seem to give a fuck, recommended Elephant Stone, a band that seems to strive for pop perfection.

My initial confusion manifested itself in the form of disappointment in Elephant Stone. But that seems to be changing. I’m listening to Elephant Stone as I’m typing this, and even now, my opinion of it is evolving. If someone told me to listen to an album that contained reverb-heavy tracks, prominent drums, and lengthy periods of instrumental weirdness I’d be totally sold. The sitar isn’t for everyone (I’m personally not a huge fan), and although the sitar is definitely an important aspect of this album, it’s not at all overwhelming. Rishi Dhir is not playing the sitar for the sake of playing the sitar, and I’m thankful for that.

The biggest problem I had at first was Dhir’s voice. It was “too good,” if you know what I mean. Unlike Alex Maas of The Black Angels, who sings as passionately as anyone and it sounds perfect, Dhir tries to sing too perfectly and you don’t feel the passion. But there I go again, trying to compare Elephant Stone to another band; that’s not how I’d recommend listening to this album. Take it for what it is: a ten-track collection of short and sweet songs, with the exceptions of “A Silent Moment,” and “The Sea of Your Mind,” where the band swerves off the beaten path and makes a diversion into the realm of the unknown, resulting in some seriously good times. 

“The Sea of Your Mind,” is the best song and a justification for buying the entire album. But it’s a 9-minute commitment. The best sample of Elephant Stone is the second track, “Heavy Moon,” on which you can hear the startling contrast between the ominous tone of the music and the beautiful pitch of Rishi Dhir’s voice.

If I discovered these guys on my own, if I’d stumbled across them on the radio or something, I’d probably love them. But right now, I can’t shake this unnatural, unjustifiable feeling of disappointment. Elephant Stone is, ultimately, a great example of the irony of social media: I might never have heard of Elephant Stone if it wasn’t for Facebook, but I probably would have liked their album a whole lot more.   

Grade: B-                         

                 

In the summer of 2011, I went to see The Black Keys play at Artpark. It was, as you can probably imagine, an amazing show. But let me back up for a minute. The reason I ended up going to the show in the first place was because I wanted to see Cage the Elephant, who was opening for them. At that point in my life, if you can believe it, I was a bigger fan of Cage the Elephant than The Black Keys. You may be able to guess what happened next, but I’ll tell you anyway: I was totally underwhelmed by Cage the Elephant and completely blown away with the sound and power The Black Keys generated with (pretty much) only two people. I was left wondering if I had seen Cage the Elephant at the height of their career. Was opening for The Black Keys in Lewiston, New York going to be one of their most memorable shows? I doubt it, but the fact that I'm even considering it is worth noting.

I’m thinking about all of this because I just listened to the self-titled debut LP by FIDLAR, a band that shares some similarities with Cage the Elephant. It’s definitely an impressive album and I will certainly keep listening to it. The unpolished, tinny-sounding, screaming-mad-lyrical attack of “Cheap Beer” hits you like a punch in the face right off the bat. Zac Carper, FIDLAR’s lead singer, is not a gentleman I would ever charge with the task of lulling a baby to sleep. These guys were put on earth to make noise. But my concern is that the ceiling is not very high for punk or punk-revival bands right now; my worry is that they are making noise that people no longer want to listen to.

If this sounds like a very “corporate” stance on things, well, I guess maybe it is. But let me explain myself. It seems like most music-consuming individuals right now are looking for either a genre-bending sound or a new sound entirely. An example of this is The Lumineers, Imagine Dragons, and fun. currently occupying the 1^st, 3^rd, and 4^th spots on the Billboard Rock charts. I’m not going to turn this into an argument about the merits of each band, but I can say for certain that those are not Rock bands. Or are they? What exactly defines Rock right now? I feel like whoever makes those kinds of decisions had a discussion that I was not privy to, and the result is that bands like The Lumineers, who ten years ago would have existed in some state of folk-rock obscurity, are now our generations “rock stars.”

This is presumably really unfortunate for bands like FIDLAR. Although Carper declares, on the second track “Stoked and Broke,” that “I just wanna get really high/smoke weed until I die/I don’t ever wanna get a job,” I assume that most of that is hyperbole and he’d actually really like to get a job. Or at least sell enough records to do what he wants to do and nothing else. Again, I liked this album, but I don’t see it starting the kinds of revolutions this music would’ve if, say, it was released thirty-five years ago. Thirty-five years ago, if a kid was caught listening to Carper belting out, “Why did you go betray me/You’re such a whore/I stay at home drinking/you’re such a whore,” as he does on the 5^th track “Whore,” the mom, dad, local priest and family cat would’ve gathered in the living room to explain just how awful the devil is. Nowadays, if a parent caught their kid listening to FIDLAR, they’ll just shrug it off, go back into the den and pop in their Lumineers CD.

Highlights of the album for me were the above-mentioned “Cheap Beer” and “Whore,” and I loved the reverberating guitar and general anger of the final song “Cocaine,” but my favorite song on FIDLAR is “Gimmie Something.” Just take a typical Beach Boys song, add some lyrical distortion and more amplification and you’ll come away with “Gimmie Something." 

Punk music used to have an edge, but now it seems like more of a novelty than anything else. After hearing Carper belt out in the opening track, “I drink cheap beer/so what/fuck you,” what else can you think? The question then becomes: Are they aware of this? And I’d say yes, they are. FIDLAR is a 14-track album full of short songs with a West coast beach-punk vibe and they did a hell of a job picking a sound and sticking to it. I can only imagine the party that occurred on the day this album came out and all I can really say is good for them.     

Grade: B

Listen closely when I say this: These guys are freaking good. This is special music. I hesitate to use the word groundbreaking unless I’m talking about a legend or discussing details of a new construction project but listening to The Lone Bellow is a potentially life-altering experience. I of course mean that in a strictly musical sense: Listening to The Lone Bellow is not going to give you a better job and a new car. But it might feel just as good. Every so often, a band comes along that might just change everything. This is that band. With the wildly impressive song structure and harmonic brilliance of each track, they’re taking Winston Marshall’s banjo and smashing it right on top of Marcus Mumford’s head, yelling “The bar has been raised!”   

Excuse me for fawning over a band that I just started listening to a few days ago, but there’s something fascinating about listening to a kind-of country-sounding band sing about taking the F train home into Brooklyn. It just works. Moving to New York City seems to be the perfect antidote to the annoying twang and vague ignorance associated with country music. To those who think Toby Keith singing about red Solo cups is the epitome of America I have news for you: it is not. A band with roots in the south that found a new home in the Big Apple and cultivated a new sound – that’s America.

If you are not moved by the second track, “Tree to Grow,” you are not a human being. It is five minutes of magic, beginning with a soft acoustic guitar quickly followed by a soft drum beat. The song slowly builds up and gradually ascends to a beautifully melodic group sing-along that CSNY would be proud of, and right at the height of it all, they slow it back down and gently put the song to bed, so to speak. It’s not something that hasn’t been done before, but nobody has done it this well in a while.

If I can complain about one thing, it’s the melodramatic names of the songs. “Two Sides Of Lonely,” “You Never Need Nobody,” “You Can Be All Kinds Of Emotional,” “You Don’t Love Me Like You Used To,” and “The One You Should’ve Let Go,” are the unfortunate names of some of the songs on the album. It’s possible they named these tracks before they crossed the Mason-Dixon Line and someone forgot to change them. But if you listen to this album like I presume it was meant to be listened to – fully and completely – the names of the songs are irrelevant.

If you’re going to listen to one song on the album, let it be the first, “Green Eyes And A Heart Of Gold.” And if you can’t even give me the whole song, listen to the last minute, in particularly at the 3:30 mark, right at the height of the song, in the midst of the pounding drums in the background as the band’s in full-fledged group sing-along mode, when Kanene Pipkin – their female vocalist and mandolin player ­– delivers the most perfectly timed “Oh-Oh-Oh’s” I’ve ever heard.

The Lone Bellow is not the height of music, but it’s the height of this type of music. They’re a little like Of Monsters and Men, without those two catchy singles and that whole being-from-Iceland vibe they exude. But The Lone Bellow is not a cutesy band like OMAM; they sing with more passion and more soul, and sometime this year they are going to explode.

Of course, if I’m wrong, you never read this.

Grade: A

Note: The only video for the studio version of "Green Eyes And A Heart Of Gold" I could find also doubles as a Green Bay Packers highlight video.

I’ll admit this much right off the bat: I hadn’t heard of New Order until about a week ago. This is either an egregious display of musical ignorance or an acceptable result of trying to forget about the 80’s, but there, I said it. Before I answer the question everyone is dying to know – is it good? – I must first ask something much more important: What do we expect from music these days? Are we looking for something that will move us profoundly, or simply move us physically? It’s clear right now that anyone with access and enough motivation and maybe a little luck can release an EP or at least a mix tape and for a short while stop and make us listen. This development gives us a better chance to either hear something great or hear something awful, so I ask again: What is our goal when listening to music?

Now, New Order is not an example of any old Joe buying his way into a record studio and playing the shit that he’s spent the last 6 years practicing in his basement. They are old hats in the music industry. But they’re a good subject to use to get to the bottom of this research question of mine. Their new album, Lost Sirens, sounds great. I like that it relies less on the synth-pop sound of the 80’s and more on the driving guitars of the 70’s and the nowadays. I thoroughly enjoyed this past week of listening to it with a critical ear. But what happens to this album next week, or the week after? Am I going to listen to it again, or was this just an enjoyable little fling that ultimately has no chance of working out? If the latter turns out to be true, can I call Lost Sirens a good album? This is the crux of my question.

The obvious answer is no. If I listen to it for a few days and never want to listen to it ever again, clearly it is not a significant album. But my objective here is to distinguish significant from pleasurable. There were (sadly) only 8 songs, and I generally liked most of them. The album really got my dance blood flowing, and my dance blood does not flow easily. This is not an album to listen to sitting down. However, it is not an album to listen to in a club. It exists in a kind of in-between state, and I worry that this in-between-ness may reduce this album to a very small blip in the chronology of my music listening-to life.

New Order is a band made up of some old Joy Division dudes, and Lost Sirens is basically a collection of songs that were recorded almost a decade ago but were never released because the band broke up. So it’s a minor miracle that I’m even talking about Lost Sirens at all. But here I am, talking about it, so I’ll proclaim the following with total confidence: this is the best album I’ve heard this year. Granted, I haven’t had a chance to listen to the new A$AP Rocky and the only other album I’ve listened to start-to-finish is the utterly disappointing Vessel by Twenty One Pilots. But there’s some really good stuff happening on Lost Sirens. The 5^th track, “Hellbent,” is a party, replete with striking guitar and keyboard fills between verses. The 7^th track, “I’ve Got a Feeling,” would be the highlight of an 80’s-themed party for me. And everything seems to be built up for the last song, “I Told You So,” which is not just the obvious song of the album in my opinion but an overall impressive sonic achievement. I love a good guitar drone, and this song has it throughout, all the way through the end when we are blessed with a beautifully psychedelic crescendo that I never saw coming.

I’m not drooling over this album, however, because the first half of it isn’t spectacular and when it comes down to it, an 8-song album just doesn’t cut it for me. I’d like some more. But here’s the answer to my original question: what I expect when listening to an album is to be stimulated for an hour and want to repeat the experience at some point in the near future. That’s all. Lost Sirens had me stimulated for 40 minutes and not necessarily eager to listen to it again immediately, but certainly open to the idea of adding a few songs off it to my iPod. Is there a level above lukewarm? If so, that’s Lost Sirens.

Grade: B

I had the opportunity to listen to Vessel by Twenty One Pilots this week. I also had the opportunity to visit Siberian Russia with a two-day stopover in the Gaza Strip, which I regrettably turned down in favor of listening to Vessel by Twenty One Pilots. Has anyone out there heard of Twenty One Pilots? There is surprisingly little information available on the internet about them. As of this writing, they don’t even have a Wikipedia page. I’ve gathered this much: They are Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun, a slightly-older-than-college-aged duo from Columbus, Ohio, who just released their debut LP with Fueled by Ramen records.

If after reading that previous sentence you are in any way intrigued, then I have good news: You will probably like this band. I, however, just turned 27, which is approximately 15 years too old to appreciate their music. Considering the fact that when I was 12 years old, I thought the pinnacle of music was Smash Mouth and Sugar Ray, I gotta believe that there’s an audience for these guys. But if you’re of legal drinking age and have relatively sound decision-making capabilities, you really have no business listening to them.

I’m perhaps being overly harsh in an effort to get my point across. They seem like a “fun” couple of guys and (probably) by default play “fun” music. They are passionate about their music and you can clearly tell by listening to any of their songs that they enjoy what they do. But my biggest problem is that I don’t know exactly what it is they do. According to the Fueled by Ramen blog, their music is a “distinctive fusion of piano-driven indie-rocktronica and lyrical uplift.” Props to their marketing people for coming up with that gem, because that sounds a little like Foster the People, and Foster the People they are certainly not. Do you know what Vessel sounds like? It sounds like Asher Roth and a bad version of The Killers got together and decided to write a Broadway musical.

The first 40 seconds of Vessel is pretty cool. The beat got me pretty pumped up. But then one of the guys starts rapping, and ladies and gentleman, we do not have another 2pac on our hands. He raps for a while, and then the song dramatically changes into something entirely different and the other guy (or the same guy, I’m not really sure and I don’t really care) starts singing. And then it changes back to rapping over an EDM beat. The song goes in approximately 12 different directions. Of the tempo, Mr. Joseph said in a recent Huffington Post interview, “I don’t really know what it is I was thinking; it was just that I’d like to hear a song like that.” Unfortunately, it’s not just that song that’s the problem. Inexplicable rapping abounds on Vessel: I don’t understand why it even exists at all. He’s not an awful rapper, but let me ask you this: would you sprinkle oregano on a hot dog? I suppose you could, but…why would you?

Again, it’s possible I’m being a bit rough on these guys. I don’t consider myself a better person for trashing a band in a review. Since I possess no musical capabilities I’m really intrigued by the process of writing and recording a song; it’s turning absolutely nothing into something. It’s still art. But when you release an album on Fueled by Ramen records you are opening the door for some criticism. The best thing I can say about this band is that I’m sure they’d play a fun, energetic live show. I’d buy a ticket to see them just out of curiosity. And if I walked into someone’s house and they were playing this album I wouldn’t ask them to turn it off. But the worst thing I can say about them is that I’d be embarrassed to recommend them to a friend.

I’ll still throw them a bone, however. “The Run and Go,” is a pretty damn catchy song, and “Guns for Hands,” is not an affront to my ear canal. But with so much great music out there it’s hard to envision a scenario in which I’d play this album ever again.

Grade: C-        

Am I the only one out there? Okay, I’ll be more specific. Am I the only one out there who, when the day is drifting by slowly, stares longingly out the window thinking about the glorious return of Outkast? I’m not talking about the Speakerboxx/Love Below Outkast – no, hell no. I’m not even talking about Stankonia Outkast. I’m talking about Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik and ATLiens Outkast; that period in the mid-nineties when they were at their raw, southern-stank best. But since Andre 3000 has been largely quiet in the music industry, spending his time working on his acting career and facial hair, and Big Boi seems content doing his own thing, I worry I might be waiting in vain.

It’s too bad, because although these guys don’t really seem to need each other anymore, I do. And I suspect a lot of other people need them also. There’s never been a better rap duo than the two of them. I mean, have you heard “Player’s Ball?” Nobody – nobody! – plays as well off each other as ‘Dre and Big Boi did.

I listened to Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors, Big Boi’s slightly less wordy follow-up to 2010’s Sir Lucious Left Foot…The Son of Chico Dusty. Was it good? That’s a really tough question, and before I answer that, I need to ask myself a different question: If this wasn’t Big Boi, and it was some random up-and-comer, would I have enjoyed it? The short answer is no. I would’ve hated it. There are parts of it that are just tremendously awful. That should take care of that, right? Well, it’s more complicated than that. Since I’ve professed my love for everything Outkast in the above paragraphs, I was determined to sift through the garbage that is this album and find something good. That turned out to be a tall task.

The biggest problem is that there are songs on this album that I actively despise - the third track, “Apple of My Eye,” for instance. “Gimme one reason why, gimme one reason why, why, why…you’re the apple of my eye,” repeats the chorus over and over, and I wanted to reply with, “Gimme one reason why, gimme one reason why, why, why…I shouldn’t throw this CD out my window right now and run it over multiple times with my car.” The 7^th track, “CPU,” has a similar problem. “And it’s you that’s on my computer screen, cuz it’s you that’s on my mind,” repeats the chorus in this one. What does that even mean? Is Big Boi masturbating to a girl he likes? I don’t understand. The biggest shame is that the beat in this song is actually pretty sick, but it’s done in by the utterly cringe-worthy chorus.

I counted 4 good songs on this CD, and keep in mind, that’s factoring in my furious, lifelong attempt to like everything Big Boi does. “She Hates Me,” featuring the dependable if not remarkable Kid Cudi, “Lines,” featuring A$AP Rocky, and “Mama Told Me,” featuring Kelly Rowland are among the highlights of the album. This may be a good way to sum up everything up: One of the strongest songs on Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors, an album by the second-best rapper in Outkast, features the second-best singer in Destiny’s Child.

The best song on the album is the second track, “The Thickets.” The first track amounted to nothing more than a long intro, so this was really the first song on the album. Forgive me for having been excited for a moment; this is the closest Big Boi came to that dirty, mid-nineties brilliance I’ve always loved. Unfortunately, he does not sustain that quality of rapping throughout the rest of the album.

If I told you that I liked this album it would be a pretty vicious lie, and if you hear people talking about how much they enjoy it, they’d be guilty of spreading a dangerous rumor. It’s just not good. It’s that simple. Leave this one alone.

Grade: D+