We Reviewed Literally Whatever You Sent Us, Volume Ten

Once a month, we do something stupid. Very stupid. Like, the stupidest thing imaginable. We open the floodgates and let people send us whatever crap they want. We'll review it, no matter how bad, unlistenable, or borderline racist it is. This month provided an array of unexceptional works. Let's dig into this mess…

Dan:

Congrats on downloading a beat-making program on CNET and posting your first crack at it on Soundcloud.

Kim:

Electronica is so the new emo. But instead of pale boys wailing about girls stomping all over their hearts, it’s a bunch of pale boys in bedrooms lit only by the glare of the laptop screens expressing their romantic angst and inability to connect in this modern world via gloomy doomy beats and a butt ton of reverb. The sound of space isn’t deafening, the sound of your loneliness is deafening. Somehow I feel like Arca is in part to blame for this…

Eric:

We get it, guys.

Interstellar

releases this week.

Dan: This is the type of shit where, after you die, your family will look through your computer and discover these wav files on your computer and say, “Wait, Uncle Robert made music? I wonder why he never told us about… oh.”
Kim: Oh man. Rob! Dixon! Why do you have to do this to me? You look so sweet and well-meaning in that rear-view mirror shot on your Bandcamp album cover! And the name of the album: A New Life! The optimism! I can’t crush you. Instead I will thank you for only putting up one-minute-something snippets of your 15-song strong record. You have been merciful and I will be too.
Eric: This sounds like a guy who listens to a lot of mid-career Beck and then records music on Sunday afternoons. Those aren’t bad things, either. I’d definitely listen to this guy sing his heart out before he “gets weird” mid-set at a bar with a shot and a beer special on Miller High Life and whiskey.

Dan:

You sound like a dude that Talib Kweli would hang out with so he can steal verses from you.

Kim:

WASSUP 1999! I feel like I’m hotboxing doing donuts in a cul-de-sac.

Eric:

This is fine. Whatever.

Dan:

This was KISS’ record that was so bad that even KISS—a band who sells coffins with their logos on it—was embarassed.

Kim:

Gene Simmons is such a hateful sexist cunt I honestly C-A-N-N-O-T.

Eric:

Sounds like a dope karaoke track.

Dan:

This is not terrible for what I’m assuming are a bunch of hippies.

Kim:

Dan, you’re going soft. Or are all those punk shows starting to take their toll on your eardrums? I have some earplugs you can have if you like. The treatment on the vocals are truly lamentable. It makes me feel like this record is being played from two separate ends of the room, but they’re ever so slightly out of sync with each other. And the drums are a bleeding mess.

Eric:

You work for a college radio station. Every day, you receive multiple promo CDs. Every promo CD sounds like this.

Dan:

Thank you for alerting me to the fact that there was a 1984

Peanuts

take on

Flashdance

. Oh my God, they also did

Footloose

and

Saturday Night Fever.

I no longer want to listen to these songs and only want to listen to Snoopy versions of music.

Kim:

This just makes me wanna dress like Michelle Pfeiffer, look really moody, and watch

Scarface

.

Eric:

Snoopy the GAWD.

Dan:

Obviously I’ve given up on reviewing your songs now that I’ve begun work on the

Peanuts

thing. I can’t find the

Saturday Night Fever

one, so I’m just watching the movie. Man, this is such a classic Brooklyn movie. John Travolta was a dang hunk before he became a crazy Scientologist.

Kim:

I need to pee. BRB.

Eric:

Somebody needs to tell Noel Gallagher that someone is making shitty rap music that sounds like knockoff A$AP Rocky and naming it “Oasis.”

Dan:

[

too busy watching movie

]

Kim:

Well hello, saxophone. This is chill. I’m down. But the video makes me feel like I’ve put two contact lenses in the same eye and then decided to spend the day wearing 3D glasses, while looking through a kaleidoscope. So when this dude slurs: “Tell them bitches please don’t blow my high.” Bitch, you’re blowing it with these visuals.

Eric:

List of things I don’t want to hear rappers rap about: getting high, when you get high, getting the things that get you high, bitches, bitches blowing you, bitches blowing your high.

Dan: I paused Saturday Night Fever to listen to this because the cover made me laugh. The first two songs were kinda slow but the third one picked up a little. Next time, be as funny as your cover, buttbag.
Kim: “Recorded in a garage, a bathroom, a closet, etc etc…” Good use of space, but I do wish the so-so brand of indie Thieves are pumping out was as exciting and dramatic as an actual telenovela! They should try writing a song about that time Francesca was caught having sex under the sink with her son’s girlfriend Marianna. Classic telenovela material.
Eric: I kind of fuck with this? It doesn’t reinvent the wheel but sometimes it’s nice to hear a band do something you’re familiar with and do it well.

Dan:

You’re the guy who wears huge DJ headphones in his Facebook profile photo.

Kim:

This sounds like a skipping record for 31 seconds which is folly given that everyone’s attention span has shrunk to half that unless you’re stoned out of your gourd. I guess this is OK but it takes two and half minutes to kick in and it definitely doesn’t better Caribou’s version. Not to get all serious, but come on! Remixes are only worth a damn if they’re an improvement on or a radical overhaul of the original. Those are the rules. Follow them.

Eric:

Rule number one when it comes to remixing: don’t remix Caribou. You’ll just fuck it up.

Dan: If I PayPal you $100, will you invest in a distortion pedal?
Kim: Can we just take a moment and soak in the fact that this guy (or band?) is called Inifinite Pathos and the album is titled Another Cog in the Machine. LOL. There’s a lyric in the first song that runs: “Please slow down / I can’t be far behind.” If any dude said that to me, let alone quasi-sang that to me, I would have to respond: “KEEP UP, YOU PUSSY.” Additionally, I skipped all over this album and there’s a complete lack of cohesion. If Nina Garcia from Project Runway was reviewing this collection she’d call it a hot mess or worse. Auf wiedersehen!
Eric: This guy seems sad.

Dan:

I can’t help but notice that a lot of these submissions are just people dicking around with sound effects. Real instruments or GTFO.

Kim:

Just like Karouac. above, Participant. is employing a pointless period in his musical moniker, which is upsetting me mostly because I’m hungry. This dude is sensi like Ben Gibbard, but I’m not in the mood for sensi. I want BRUTE FORCE! His glitchy sadness is quite sweet and at least Participant. can sing, but I’d rather be swept me off my feet and thrown over a shoulder, and carried back to some cave and this guy would definitely buckle under my weight. Next!

Eric:

Would make out to this.

Dan: I can’t even make fun of poor Corvaa. Sure, there were comically few (i.e. no) people watching, so she could’ve just sat this one out, but she didn’t. She gave 110% That is a true artist. Never stop chasing that rainbow, Corvaa.
Kim: Corvaa is performing at the LTG Tires Sunday Funday Car Show on the "The Plywood Stage." That is all.
Eric: I’m just going to list some of my observations about this video: There are trees in the background. There is virtually nobody in attendance. The video is over seven minutes long. Before performing, she says it is her first single, but at about three minutes, she breaks into Zedd’s “Clarity.” Sometimes you can’t hear her singing because the wind is blowing. The entire performance seems to be choreographed? Her shoes are actually pretty tight.

Dan:

I feel like a lot more people would’ve listened to this if you’d have titled it “Rare Dismemberment Plan B-Side.”

Kim:

I keep going back to the beginning of this song and trying to pay attention to what’s going on, but I keep drifting off. Sorry! It’s actually well-produced, and totally competent which sounds like a diss but in the light of the majority of the songs we’ve reviewed today this is a really big compliment. It’s still pretty magnolia though. Sorry if you don’t know what that means, yes, Dan it’s a British-ism, but SAILS will get it.

Eric:

These guys probably paid a handsome amount for time at the studio but they should’ve just used that to invest in an internet degree from the University of Phoenix.

Dan:

Hell yeah, song from a Super Nintendo game.

Kim:

Super Mario

is still the only video game I can play. This really makes me wanna listen to Powerglove though…

Eric:

This is music for and made by a bunch of fucking dorks.

Dan:

“Bigger Than Yeezus” is fucking hilarious. And this song is… I actually think I don’t hate it? I think my standards have been LOWERED. Not just with music, but in life.

Kim:

This sounds like Ben Folds getting piledrived by Maroon 5.

Eric:

Sounds like this guy is singing with a balled up t-shirt stuffed in his mouth.

@NoiseyMusic @theKTB @ericsundy @danozzi please review the Noisey website.

— Joel Gethin Lewis (@JoelGethinLewis) November 4, 2014

Dan: It needs and update. We talk about it everyday. Do it for us for free.
Kim: Angelfire, right? Hey Joel, remember when you geek-programmed that sick digital wall thing so that I could move stuff by just waving my hands around like Tom Cruise in Minority Report? Can you do something similar to the Noisey site? THANKS, BABES.
Eric: I really liked that story these guys ran on Interpol.
Kim: Eric. That was actually a really great piece.
Dan: I like that we have a comments section so that I can tell you that you are hipster morons and you live in your parents' basements.

Dan:

This is one of those instances where I ask resident rap expert/Taylor Swift-lover Eric Sundermann if this is good or not. Eric?

Kim:

Nice passing the buck, Dan. All on you, Sundy.

Eric:

Seems like this guy listened to Chief Keef for a long time, tried to make a beat like Metro Boomin’, and then attempted to rap like OG Maco’s “Bitch U Guessed It.” This sucks.

Dan:

Cool. Just checking.

Dan:

I was really excited about a Tim Gunn-inspired freestyle and you let me down.

Kim:

What! Tim Gunn is my spirit animal! I don’t think he would like this rap though because it’s total dogshit and not even an extra trip to Mood, a 100 more bucks, and some decorative ombre fringe could save it. That being said, these guys have called their album

Ja Rule Party at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

. [insert clapping emoji.]

Eric:

Part of me wants to believe that this is completely self-aware and these guys are recording the worst music they can think of and calling themselves fuckboys while doing so, but the unfortunate reality is that, even though this is probably the case, the music isn’t bad enough to even be considered as a guilty pleasure and instead all of it just sounds like dogshit.

Dan, Eric, and Kim are on Twitter. Please don't send them anything else.