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Music Reviews - The What We Do Is Secret Issue

By VICE Staff

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JAY-Z
American Gangster
Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam
Everybody’s walking around saying this album is great. They’re wrong. It’s better than Jigga’s last piece of crap, but it’s hardly reminiscent of Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint, as Hov claimed it should be. And that’s not because of the tracks. Save for DJ Toomp and Just Blaze’s missteps, the music here is highly cohesive, showcasing a welcome dose of soulful sophistication, especially since chipmunk beats became out of style. One man is to thank for this: hip-hop’s most underrated producer, Puff motherfucking Daddy, of all people. But I digress. This album sucks because of Jay-Z himself. Point blank, I know this is a cheap shot, but the big homie sounds old. His esoteric coke tales lack the swagger and the charm he’s known for. In that lane, quite simply, Ghost and Clipse do it better. Then he tries to get preachy and talk about Don Imus. Coming from the man who taught us the difference between a 5.0 and a 5.6, it’s such a turnoff. No wonder the best verse on here is in “Ignorant Shit”—it was recorded four years ago.

DAVID DASH
 

WU-TANG CLAN
8 Diagrams
SRC
Could you ever imagine these Shaolin brothers falling off? I mean, this album’s got some joints, but overall, it’s a hastily thrown-together compilation of lazy verses and cacophonous beats that exudes lack of enthusiasm. Sidebar: I recently saw ODB’s Dirty Minded YouTube documentary and I’m finally fully convinced of his tragic genius. Watch it at once!

BLAQUE PAK







 

GHOSTFACE KILLAH
The Big Doe Rehab
Def Jam
Everybody’s walking around saying this album is great. They’re right. There’s nothing like a fourth-quarter Ghostface release to inject a (mighty) healthy dose of paranoia into the holiday season. You know what to expect: never-ending, convoluted New York stories about pregnant crack whores, lush fantasy banquets, and drug dealers named Guillermo, frenetically spit over old soul records (not samples, full records). Is Tony Stark’s shtick formulaic at this point? Yes, completely. But he’s the only one who can pull this off, so we’re all fiendin’.

BUSTA NUT
 

BEANIE SIGEL
The Solution
Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam
Remember when Biggie said, “Don’t be mad, UPS is hiring”? Beanie Sigel looks like he’s been hired, no, fired by UPS. He’s old, he’s scary looking, and with that mustache, in this day and age, it’s a miracle he’s got a record deal. But truth be told, he’s one of the hardest spitters out. Too bad he delivered his most stellar performance on Ghost’s album (see “Barrel Brothers”). The Solution suffers from poor production and no direction whatsoever. Bad karma for all those “Kanye is gay” remarks?

WHOADIE ALLEN
 

DRAMA
Gangsta Grillz: The Album
Grand Hustle/Atlantic
A couple of years ago, we were all over the South. Mike Jones, Paul Wall, then Rick Ross—we were sweating all these new cats. But they had a curse: only one hot song each. So now, when they’re all compiled on an album, it’s like, who cares? Makes you miss Pimp C, doesn’t it?

SMUTTY RUFF


CROM
Hot Sumerian Nights
Underdogma
I got bored last night and tracked down the source of every sample and/or reference on this album. So far I’ve got: Herb Alpert, Kreator, Phantasm, Warren Zevon, Clapton, Angel Heart, HR from Bad Brains, Pink Floyd, the NBC Nightly News outro (I think), and a minimum of seven Conan the Barbarian references. If you connect the dots of this constellation of cultural knickknackery, what you will see is the distinct outline of four shirtless guys ripping Babylonian scales and battle-ax-size lines in a space composed of equal parts living room, bar, and Mr. T museum. Celebrate on, Crom. You deserve it after having created perhaps THE most important Conan monument of appreciation ever.

TELLIE RATCHET


BRAINWORMS
Which Is Worse
Rorschach
I had this in the vomit-face batch because I fully expected it to suck based on the song titles alone. (“Heart- Shaped Hickey?” Come on, dude.) But I stand corrected—Brainworms is a total machete of a band. The songs are a whole bunch of stop- and-start chaotic bursts punctuated by gross, unintelligible screams and some weird, faint hint of melody. Makes me think of a more hardcore Shellac or a less hardcore Born Against. Overall, pretty cool and a good reminder for me to actually listen to the crap that Vice sends me instead of just assuming it’s all garbage (even though most of it is).

SASSY COCKROACHES


SAVIOURS
Into Abaddon
Kemado
Sometimes it’s fun to pack really lightly for a long trip as a goof. Going through security with a pair of glasses, a condom, and a sandwich feels amazing. According to its title, this is THE album for trips through the tortured underground Abaddonian hinterlands. Its title lies. This is the soundtrack to a pissed-off solo walk I took after leaving my family’s vacation luggage on our front doorstep when I was 16.

ROGUE AWNING
 

SEVERE TORTURE
Sworn Vengeance
Earache
We know where we stand with a band like Severe Torture. There’s no danger that we’re going to buy the next record and be horrified to learn that they spent a few months in the studio farting around with a harmonica and some old Ravi Shankar LPs. No, you get what you pay for: an avalanche of brutality bulldozed over your head that you have to mosh your way out of. If that metaphor sounds retarded, you are already thinking too hard and should flip ahead to the “weird/other” section of these reviews to reinforce your smart eclecticness. This is death metal, not the GRE, you dick.

VOLTRON III


TOMBS
Tombs
Black Box
Want, want, want to like this. It looks like my favorite records look and makes all the sounds my favorite bands make. Plus, this Mike Hill was in Anodyne and they were a musical force for evil if ever there was one. But after listening to the whole thing twice, I just kind of sit here like “eh.” It’s probably because so much of this stuff has come out lately that I feel as if being slowly steamrollered by monstrous, plodding riffs and cavernous howls has become same shit, different day at this point. It needs to be taken to the next level, whatever that level might be. Maybe incorporate a xylophone or something. Mix it up, you know what I’m saying?

GRAMPA TICKLER
 

TUSK
The Resisting Dreamer
Tortuga
Though they feature three members of Pelican, Tusk has a vocalist and is MUCH heavier than that Chicago instrumental snooze institution. The vocals get in the way a little, resembling Jello Biafra (never a good thing) or any random extreme-metal band’s high-pitched screaming or “tortured” delivery. Actually, this has a lot more in common with grindcore than what could be considered indie metal. That’s fortunate, and so is the fact that the band named themselves after the best Fleetwood Mac album.

ANDREW EARLES


BLACK MOUNTAIN
In the Future
Jagjaguwar
Everyone in our office is going completely four-car rectangles over this album. So much so that someone even stole my copy off my desk before I had a chance to rip it. They left my laptop and my collection of rare Garfield figurines and went straight for the Black Mountain CD. Anyway, I borrowed another copy and, holy shit, does it live up to the hype. This is an ALBUM. Like, in the old-fashioned sense—an entire thing that you can listen to from beginning to end and it all flows perfectly, like… uh… like the sweet menses of a thousand virgins! Ha ha ha, gross. Yeah, the riffs are very Black Sabbathy, but Sabbath riffs are a solid foundation on which to heap tons of other good shit, which these guys do—in heaps. The Neil Young-ish falsetto-voiced ballad “Stay Free” is my favorite song at the moment because I am in a quiet mood, but this is bound to change soon, and eventually all the other songs will become my favorite, in turn.

MEG SNEED
 

THE LIBERTINES
Time for Heroes: The Best of the Libertines
Rough Trade
If you’re too lazy/poor to buy two albums by a band that only put out two albums, maybe you should focus a little more of your energy on doing something productive with yourself instead of reading shit like this.

YEESH MCMUMPHRIES
 












 

AGNOSTIC FRONT
Warriors
Nuclear Blast
This has gone far enough. NYHC needs to do an intervention. For one, allowing Agnostic Front to keep putting out records is like letting your 90-year-old grandfather keep driving the family car; pretty soon he’s going to hurt himself, or more likely someone else. Second, it sets a bad example—kids are going to think it’s cool to have a crayon drawing of a shirtless guido with a vestigial twin that’s a viking for their record cover too, and things will go downhill from there. Kind of like they have been going downhill for AF since, what, 1986? But like the man said, this is not a bad review, “it’s the goddamn fucking truth.”

MIKE SABU
 

MAJOR STARS
Mirror/Messenger
Drag City
Woah, Wayne Rogers can shred a guitar. He and his Major Stars bandmates have also clearly paged through the “Vice Guide to Getting More People to Pay Attention to Your Awesome but Decidedly Middle-Aged and Unattractive Band,” enlisting unqualified hot girl Sandra Barrett to replace Wayne on vocals. Whatever. This band has always been 95-percent killer licks, anyway—here in abundance and laying waste to pretty much every atrocious psych/stomp embarrassment around.

WAYNE COIN
 

BLOOD ON THE WALL
Liferz
The Social Registry
What’s up with all the amazing albums coming out now? First Black Mountain totally tramples all the other psych-rock bands currently in existence, and then Blood on the Wall goes “Ha!” and whaps me over the head with another 90s-style fuzz-rock CD that would have changed my life in high school. Check out the last track, “Acid Fight.” That would’ve ended every mixtape I made circa ’93. Fuck it, I’m gonna make a mixtape right now just so I can do that. These guys are the best at what they do—taking the Pixies, Sonic Youth, Jesus Lizard, Ween, godheadSilo, and everything else that was good about that weird little musical era and smooshing it up into one big smooshball of excellence.

LORRAINE HOOS
 

THE SELMANAIRES
The Air Salesman
International Hits
I C WUT U DID THERE, guyz! I stopped being impressed by anagrams and other such language trickery when someone spelled “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama” backward in fourth grade, and I never even started being impressed by unimaginative horseshit like this. 

RACECAR
 

THE BIG SLEEP
Sleep Forever
French Kiss
Sorry, no jokes here, the band stole them all. Seriously, are they on some next-level shit where they identified the problem with their band (“Guys, we’re really boring”) and then crafted their name around it as a preemptive defense? Like if Deerhunter had called themselves “The It’s-OK-but-What’s-With-That-Dress-Wearing-Skinny-Fruitpop? Band” or if Black Kids were “Black Kids Who Can’t Sing”? This stunning display of foresight was almost enough for a smiley face, but you know, that whole being-boring thing is really a drag.

LEN BIAS


MIA DOI TODD
Gea
City Zen
She sounds EXACTLY like Sandy Denny… which is better than sounding exactly like Sandy Duncan! Hahaha! Remember? Hogan Family? Glass eye? Sigh.

BING BONG
 

QUINN WALKER
Laughter’s an Asshole/Lion Land
VoodooEros
Does the world really need another “outsider artist” rocking a bunch of animal-imagery nonsense? Well, no. But also YES!! Weirdo psych-folk-pop that somehow gets all of the parts right. Couldn’t tell you why but it just sounds darn good. And let’s hear it for blown-out double albums; the world needs more overindulgent artistic statements. Well, again, no. But also… maybe?

ANDREW EARLES
 

LIGHTSPEED CHAMPION
Falling off the Lavender Bridge
Domino
A study in improbability: Upon the demise of his much-heralded, secretly sucky British dance-art-whatever band, a black kid gets a flattened pompadour, travels to Omaha to record an EP with Mike Mogis, covers “Xanadu,” and follows with a stunning debut LP months later. (PS: The sucky art band was Test Icicles.)

HENRY GATHERS
 

JEFFREY LEWIS
12 Crass Songs
Rough Trade
Ever meet someone with a voice that instantly triggers some uncanny primal rage buried in your DNA? Like, the person speaks and suddenly you’re fighting an urge to grab both sides of that head and twist, twist, twist until the neck snaps and blood pours out the eye sockets? Jeffrey Lewis is that voice. Forget the fact that these are acoustic folk covers of CRASS songs (and yes, that’s exactly as nauseating as you are now imagining it to be), it’s the actual voice—a nasally, droning whine like a dull knife in the brain—that begs me to destroy it as a crime against nature that can’t bear its own existence. Like animals must sometimes cull their defective offspring, or like Sigourney Weaver’s clone in the fourth Aliens movie, I realize that I must put Jeffrey Lewis out of his misery… and ours. This abomination cannot stand.

ARTIE PHILIE
 

BOB MOULD
District Line
Anti
Here’s my theory: After everyone went nuts over that first Sugar album, which was really sort of ho-hum, Bob embarked on a little “Emperor’s New Clothes” mission and began putting out lamer and lamer records until someone would finally call his bluff, which of course to this day nobody has done. Until now. I’m gonna nip this in the bud before he starts traipsing into electronica. Here goes: “You are making lousy music.”

SHOSHASTA
 



 

WHITE, BLUE, YELLOW & CLOUDS
Introducing
I & Ear
Hmm. This is a bunch of Brooklyn cool kids making doo-wop and oldies. Like, white-boy indie-rocker-style soul oldies. But wait for the punch line: It’s kinda good! Cuz it’s messy and they can’t croon so well but you can tell they are really putting all their love into it. You know they’ve got their East Side Story box sets memorized. And they’re not being all serious about it, like those newfangled “oldies” bands who try to act all corny and retro. Or maybe they are, but it doesn’t sound shticky like that to me. Plus they have pretty killer horns and they also throw in a cover of “God Only Knows,” so who the hell knows what’s going on here. Still: endearing!

WILBERT KOPPA
 

THEE OHSEES
Suck Blood
Castle Face
This is that ol’ weirdo from the Coachwhips. He’s got the touch. He knows how to make things sound just creepy and rickety enough for it to give you that awesome weirdo vibe. So you got some droney stuff and a lot of singing-saws haunted stuff and slow tambourines and it all sounds like it’s being sung by drugged-up Manson Family members in a small shack with one mattress. And it’s pretty too. So yeah, solid all around. Kudos. Man… writing positive reviews is so boring! Gimme some more crap to talk smack about, please.

CHASTITY BURLINGHAM
 

GROWING
Lateral
The Social Registry
This is my favorite band! I love this band! I even went up to this guy who I thought was the long-haired guy in the band and I said, “Oh my God, I love your band!” And the guy was like, “Uh, I’m not in a band.” And I said, “Well, you should be! You should be in this awesome band called Growing!” Lateral sounds just like their last few albums and thank God for that. This music is a magic potion and I will tell you why: When my office is loud and I have to write, it is hell. Pure hell. But when I put Growing on my big giant noise-canceling headphones, it’s like I go into this magical writing land, where the rivers flow with words and the trees whisper clever phrasings in my ears. Their soothing ambient white-noise patterns do something wonderful to my brain. According to my iTunes I have listened to Color Wheel 23 times on my work computer since September. Lateral is only four songs—20 minutes long—so I plan on topping those numbers any day now. Thank you, Growing!!!

MEG SNEED
 

 

By VICE Staff 5 years ago More from this issue Tags: music, albums, reviews
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