thadblog is back. in fuckin pog form.
and in blog form. which makes sense, cuz that's its original form ("alf is back... in alf form?").
anyways, his latest entry is about the newest jimmy eat world cd. now, we listened to this cd together on our shared drive down to providence (see his site for details), but he continued listening to it after he got back to illinois, whereas i switched over to the garden state soundtrack and building a desk (which isn't a band or an album, but perhaps it should be both).
the point is, he gave it a 9 tamale rating. this makes it about half as good as burnout 3, but as good as any album i've ever reviewed. this is simply not true.
first of all, i'm starting to realize that the fact that i made burnout 3 twice as good as any album i've written about here is kind of terrible. but mainly, i don't think the new jew was that good. i didn't think anything was too catchy outside of the first single ("pain"), and i thought a lot of it was slow and kind of boring. this could be way off, but right as of this second i want to call them a poor man's third eye blind. their range has gone down considerably, i think, and they have this general college feel which is less based on their cool underground-ness and more based on everything else that makes it hard for college bands to hit the mainstream.
interesting subquestion - what are these qualities that make it hard for 90% of college bands to have any kind of mainstream following? i'd say it's that most of these bands have no range (which is, as i said before, what i think jew has lost). it's all well and good whne you have one cd, but two to three of the same crap, or, in a huge artistic move, replacing real drums with electronic drums - i mean, these things aren't going to cut it. furthermore, going from playing in front of a bunch of college kids who just wanna jump around and drink beer to playing in front of a real audience full of people who want to jump around, drink beer, and listen to your music and possibly buy your cd is a step that bands like better than ezra (after 2 cds), third eye blind (somehow, after 1 song, even though they are amazing), and now jew have just been unable to do.
but what makes r.e.m. different?
lyrical content?
this rambling review is ending now, but i think i've left it open enough for discussion, even if you haven't heard the new jew cd.
thadblog is back, and i don't agree with him one bit
0930-october07-2004
comments
re: word
from: zach (2004-10-07 10:48:06)
i agree fully with chad.
if a band doesn't grow with its audience it will never find a following in the music consuming world outside the small slice of that world that lies between the ages of 18 and 22. that's why when we're 40 we will still be listening to bands like dmb, but our kids will think its dumb.
"college bands" are labeled as such because they are small and unknown and emotionally charged and reactionary, and that strikes a chord with the people in that age group, who are by their nature, emotionally charged, reactionary, whiny little bitches. when people outgrow that phase, they need their music to outgrow it with them. but some bands just stick to a formula that works, and find themselves losing old fans instead of adding to their existing fan base.
re: comment
from: thad (2004-10-08 00:51:40)
it should be noted that the 9 tamales was on sort of an arbitrary scale... that is to say, it wasn't necessarily out of 10 tamales. i guess in the future i should qualify things a little more.
also, i am (sort of) still in college, whereas you are not. and, i generally dig the slower rock music more than you. j.e.w. maintained this style still but kept it different from their other stuff, which i why i liked this album. what i'm really looking for from them is something i can listen to when i'm just sitting around my apartment by myself, doing homework or using the computer or whatever, and this album gives me that.
this is why my idea for us both to review the same cd was brilliant, because we both have different tastes in music, while still generally liking the same music as a whole, so we would give different perspectives on how much we liked a cd and why.
re: comment
from: thad (2004-10-08 02:42:04)
also, i just listened to the retail version. it has a song, "nothingwrong", that the advance version didn't have. i think this song is pretty strong, more in your wheelhouse.
re: college is different
i think its because college is usually the front of the music scene. like, because of the large numbers of socially active and knowledgable people in one small area, colleges tend to "discover" bands before anyone else. which means they are more likely to really pump up the first j.e.w. album or the first t.e.b. or b.t.e. albums. the music appears their first and has its biggest following, and if the band can't create a follow-up that is worthwhile, they never emerge from the college scene. like, its less about being attractive to college students but not anyone else, and more about your first album only really being known by college students and your second album not being good enough to appeal to those same people. like, dave matthews or rem or any number of bands emerged from the college scene because the people who were in college when they were discovered continued listening to them when they left college. unless jew, teb, bte or whoever makes me want to keep listening when i am in the real world, i won't take them with me, and they go down as "college" bands.