No. 1 Single Reviews: "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas

I know this one has been at the top of the charts for five weeks now, but waiting three months for "Boom Boom Pow" to drop off the charts, only to be replaced by more Black-Eyed Peas, was so soul-crushing I couldn't open Blogger for almost a fortnight.

It boils down to a crappy, dispassionate "let's go party" song--in other words, it's still the Black-Eyed Peas. There's an oddly psuedo-sentimental, yet up-tempo feeling to the dry, eighth-note guitar strums that I can't quite put my finger on. It's got that perverse "mid-level indie trickles up to the mainstream" vibe. Remember how Kelly Clarkson got her Yeah Yeah Yeahs on with "Since U Been Gone", then got her "Since U Been Gone" on with "My Life Would Suck Without You?" Dilute that by another ten levels to get this. In fact, for the first half a minute it almost seems like it might be a likable song, but as usual the Black-Eyed Peas miss the point entirely. The vocals start, and before long will.i.am is barking out the verses in four-word tone-deaf burst: "AH GOT MAH MONEY/LET'S SPEND IT UP."

It as asinine and grating as "Boom Boom Pow," but in an entirely different way. It also plays like a checklist of shitty, focus-grouped tricks for radio singles. The lowlights include:

-Auto-Tune

-The "beat cuts out for a split second after an appropriate lyric" manuever, Lyrical Varation 15: "shut it down".

-An early favorite for corniest call-and-response bridge of the century so far, in which Fergie sounds and looks like nothing so much as a pudgy, slow girl ab-libbing along to a record.

will.i.am.: Fill up my cup
Fergie: DRANK
will.i.a.m: Mazel tov
Fergie: L'CHAIM*

-A shameless, shoehorned "counting down the days of the week bit".

I hate everything about this song. I even hate the title, "I Gotta Feeling." Even Urban Dictionary knows this means "got to" as in "have to", not "got a" as in possession.

That's right; the name of this song is "I Have To Feeling." Congratulations on electing these idiots your best representative for popular music, America!

*Yes, Fergie says "l'chaim," a Jewish toast. Yes, it's Auto-Tuned.

Where are all the Animal Collective sound-alikes?

"You can hardly throw a stone in a record shop without hitting a new album by a band that sounds like Animal Collective." - Dusted Magazine

"We'd love to get through this without mentioning Animal Collective, which has become the indie-focused writer's Beatles or Brian Wilson-- a comparison so overused that it's meaningless." - Pitchfork

"Between 1996's groundbreaking Millions Now Living Will Never Die and 2001's pacesetting Standards, Tortoise garnered a level of influence in indie music that almost rivals that of Animal Collective today." - Pitchfork (again)

Where, exactly, is this proliferation of Animal Collectivesque bands that I've somehow missed?

Concert Review: The Posies (peforming Frosting on the Beater), The Bell House, New York City, June 12

The recent explosion of bands performing full albums live--most notably with the Don't Look Back concert series--has been an interesting new way to focus on the album as a whole piece of work in an era when record sales are down and downloads and shuffle options guide a new generation to think in terms of single tracks. Choosing to do one of these shows is also something of a statement that an artist wants to hold an album up as a classic, or at least their best work, and can be a way to honor underrated albums deserving of more recognition.

The Posies' performance of Frosting on the Beater was an excellent way to elevate both an unheralded classic album and the one of the most severely underrated rock bands of the modern era. They left a string of great albums and should-have-been-hit-singles but never caught on commercially, despite swimming in power-pop cred (we're talking "Ringo Starr covers one of your songs and a Big Star reformation enlists your songwriters and singers" levels here.) Their only flaw was that their music was made for the wrong era, so one of the little ironies of their career is that their most successful and popular album was the one that coated their melodic songwriting in layers of grunge distortion.

It also happens to be their best album, however, and particularly well-suited for a live treatment. Their strongest songwriting meant an hour of sing-alongs, backed by some alternative rock sheen for a little headbanging. The opening four songs salvo is one of the best stretches of guitar-pop of the nineties, and big rockers like "Definite Door" or the era's quiet/loud dynamic on "Lights Out" punched the songs up live.

The band's rotating rhythm section has long since left the album's original players behind, putting the focus squarely on songwriters/vocalists/guitars Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow. Auer, who takes the lead on most Frosting songs, was by far the looser performer of the two. While Stringfellow's voice has held up enough to match the records well, Auer's voice seems a bit higher and more nasally than the recordings, and has lost a bit of the deep, breathy quality it used to have. Auer also does most of the lead guitar work, and worked up some good squealing noise for the noisy jam ending of "Burn and Shine" and the drumless "Coming Right Along." For his part, Stringfellow ricochets around the stage and bounces like his legs are pogo-sticks, and the frequency and intensity with which he spits (occasionally soaking the front row) would be impressive for a 20-something punk rocker, let alone a guy who's been in a band called the Posies for two decades.

The second set/encore skewed heavily towards the Frosting follow-up Amazing Disgrace, highlighted by the fierce Stringfellow rocker "Everybody is a Fucking Liar." (A few requests for that song mid-way through the set elicited the Stringfellow gem "Hey, Jon, after the last twenty seconds did you have any doubt we're in the New York area?")

The atmosphere on stage was as loose and fun as the playing, with the band retuning and cracking jokes between nearly every song--most notably a brief running gag about Bret Michaels' recent injury at the Tony Awards, including a "moment of silence." The mood from the unappreciated band before and after the show: Auer joked to the front row about missing roadies as he set up his pedals before the show, and the guys were not too famous to work their own merch booth after the show. They still deserve better--the performance would have, and should have, played just as well to a few thousand instead of a few hundred--but the show was a fitting tribute to a gem of an album.

Set One (Frosting on the Beater):
Dream All Day
Solar Sister
Flavor of the Month
Love Letter Boxes
Definite Door
Burn and Shine
Earlier Than Expected
20 Questions
When Mute Tongues Can Speak
Lights Out
How She Lied by Living
Coming Right Along

Set Two (Encore):
Start a Life
Ontario
Apology
Please Return It
Throwaway
Everybody is a Fucking Liar
Conversations
You're the Beautiful One

Covers: "Don't Stop Believin'" by the cast of Glee

I'm not sure what bugs me more: that a cover of "Don't Stop Believin'" by the cast of Glee is No. 4 on the Hot 100--five spots higher than Journey's original peaked--or that it seems to rip off the Petra Haden version. (At least the intros.)

An a capella take on a song isn't necessarily such an original idea that two people can't come to it independently. Haden's cover is from a relatively obscure compilation. A compilation with a "guilty pleasure" theme, in fact. Who knows whether or not the crew of some network television studio is aware of Haden's 2007 cover or not.

They knick the sound, but lose points for effort. Haden went so far with her vocals that she even sang the guitar solo. The Glee kids, however, wimp out. After about a minute, in come the drums and the rest of the band, and by the end of the song the a capella concept seems to have been entirely fazed out.

It's an obscenely bombastic arrangement: the a capella backing vocals stick around, horns show up, and a man and girl duet in the shrieking style of drama kids--Adam Lambert is kicking himself over a missed opportunity right now. (Speaking of Idol, if the girl on this song was a contestant she'd have "pitchy" ringing in her ears.)

If anything, it's that earnest stage sincerity that sets the Glee cover apart. Haden's version is more low-key, goofy, and even seems to be making fun of the song, or at least teasing it. The Glee version sings to the rafters and is intended to get those 12-to-15-year-olds bopping on their couches.

As for how the cover stacks up to Journey, well, who do you trust: Steve Perry or a nation of tweens with iTunes?

Concert Review: Franz Ferdinand, Electric Factory, Philadelphia, May 6

Franz Ferdinand is definitely used to playing bigger venues. They're the first band I've seen who lugged an 18-column row of TV-sized video screens and pillars of lights into the modestly-sized Electric Factory, which holds about 3,000 or less. But just like Franz Ferdinand has always had the singles mentality of a pop band, their live show is stadium-sized no matter how big the arena.

The four-song opening salvo of "Dark of the Matinee," "No You Girls," "The Fallen" and "Michael" felt like, and was received like, a hit-after-hit sequence. (And in the U.K. it would be--top ten, top twenty, top twenty and top forty.) Alex Kapranos has a great mix of natural charisma and what seems like years spent studying/absorbing the pop stars of the video era. He knows exactly when to let his guitar dangle behind his back and clutch the microphone, when a hand gesture amps up a lyric, and when to get a back-and-forth crowd sing-along going. The show even had the classic "introduce each member of the band during the last song" move, cleverly saved for "This Fire," in which each instrument comes in one by one.

The second most animated member, oddly enough, was confined to a chair. Rhythm guitarist Nick McCarthy came out on crutches, offering only "I busted my foot!" as an explanation, but managed to emanate energy from his area of the stage. The pacing of the show was spot on. "Walk Away" provided the first softer moment at a time when a break was needer, the signature hit "Take Me Out" is a second-half rejuvenator, and "40'" and "Outsiders" made for jammy, pleasing dual set closers. "40'" got a spacey, length-doubling treatment and "Outsiders" ended with a unique jam that had the entire group pounding away at the drum kit. (Having four guys with drum sticks also amps up the effectiveness of another classic concert movie, chucking the sticks into the crowd at the end.)

The encore played like a more concise set. "Jacqueline," with it's slow introduction and explosion, is a great opener, and they even threw a b-side into the mix. "Lucid Dreams" provided another moment for the band to stretch and even another drum jam (featuring the excellent opening act, the Born Ruffians,) and "This Fire" followed the wise convention of saving a powerhouse hit to close the show.

The aforementioned video screen was put to good use--everything from simply lights to truly ludicrous videos, including one which sported rotating nude marble statutes, running dogs, and a triangle which featuring the cycling faces of the band. Others were simple but effective lyrical tie-ins--photographs of a girl dancing for "Bite Hard," a pair of smoking lips for "No You Girls"--and use sparingly enough to have maximum impact.

Surprisingly for such a singles-act, those longer, jammier bits were highlights, although the numerous sing-along moments show the band's pop appeal. Although the band's indie favorites status has waned, and the long wait since their last album killed a lot of momentum, the songwriting and showmanship remain intact, and the "best of in the works" setlist shows that it's one hell of a greatest hits CD they're working on.

Setlist:
Dark of the Matinee
No You Girls
The Fallen
Michael
Turn It On
Do You Want To
Tell Her Tonight
Twilight Omens
Walk Away
Bite Hard
Take Me Out
What She Came For
40'
Outsiders

Encore:
Jacqueline
Ulysses
Shopping For Blood
Lucid Dreams
This Fire

"Kids These Days!": Asher Roth

Asher Roth's "I Love College" is the most manipulative, faux-sentimental, pandering shit to hit the airwaves since 2000, when a then-31-year-old woman sang about how sad high school graduation can be, man. Roth deserves credit for one thing--at 23, according to his Wiki, at least his yearning for the glory days of keg stands and dollar slices might be legit.

Too bad it's legitimately retarded.

The genesis of the song was a sample of Weezer's "Say It Ain't So." Perhaps Roth thought, not unwisely, that after the most dramatic descent from brilliance into incompetence in alternative rock history Rivers Cuomo would surely clear the sample. But when he asked the Harvard graduate, Cuomo must have said "Yeah, right, you're using my song, and my name is Jonas!" Instead, we're left with a vague approximation of the riff. (Come to think of it, it sounds exactly like the kind of shitty attempt you'd hear from an open dorm window in college, where some asshole annoys you while browsing a guitar tab site and botching rock radio staples.)

At least the music itself stems from a good song. The lyrics are utterly irredeemable. First of all, Asher Roth cannot rap. To rephrase: I am not saying Roth is a bad rapper. I am saying he actually lacks the sense of rhythm, timing and cadence to manipulate his sentences in a way that resembles a single song accepted as hip-hop. His one-note, syllable-a-second delivery has all the vocal mastery of a karaoke sing-along at a bar during $1 pitcher night.

The lyrics, such as they are, indicate Roth was the type of dumbass who coasted by on 12 credits a semester and still took five years to do it. "Thirsty Thursday." "Keg stands." "Chug!" "Freshmen." "Banker's Club." "Miller Lite." The words read like a word cloud of college cliches. In fact, if we head over to Wordle...


"I can't tell you what I learned from school," Roth claims. What he didn't learn is easier to point out: subject-verb agreement ("my good friends is all I need"), slant rhyme (mangling "champion" to "champy-yawn" in a pairing with "beer pong"), and copyright law (the aforementioned sample clearance problems.)

Then again, what do you expect from a song that sports the lyric "time isn't wasted when you're getting wasted," which makes one suspect if the song was inspired by a bumper sticker, or perhaps a particularly profound piece of bathroom graffiti. Following the college theme, if I had to give this song a letter grade, I would defer to Mr. Cuomo's judgment:

No. 1 Single Reviews: "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eyed Peas

FACT CHECK

On their new No. 1 single, "Boom Boom Pow," the Black Eyed Peas claim to bring some kind of futuristic music.

Assertion: "I'm so 3008/You so 2000-and-late."

Fact: This lyric clearly indicates that this song's puns were generated last year, when a 2008 reference would have been timely.

Assertion: "'Cause we got the beat that bounce/We got the beat that pound/We got the beat that 808/That the boom, boom in your town."

Fact: The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer was released in 1980, making it 1038 years old at the time Fergie alleges to be singing from.

Assertion: "I'm a beast when you turn me on/Into the future, Cybertron/Harder, faster, better, stronger/Sexy ladies, extra longer."

Fact: If the Autobots are indeed out there on Cybertron, I have no way of knowing what hot jam they're rocking, but it's probably not an eight-year-old jacked Daft-Punk-by-way-of-Kanye lyric that's not even in the right order.

Assertion: "Them chickens jocking my style/They try to copy my swagger/I'm on that next shit now."

Fact: No one is interested in taking your shitty overused auto-tune filter (a.k.a. robbing Fergie to pay T-Pain.)

Assertion: "Boom boom boom, gotta get-get/Boom boom boom, gotta get-get/Boom boom boom, gotta get-get/Boom boom boom, gotta get-get/Boom boom boom now/Boom boom boom now/Boom boom boom/Boom boom."

Fact: Go to Hell.