Hey, y'all. I'm back. (Like crooked crack, yeah?) Sorry about the hiatus - I really do intend to be updating this daily, because the more screw the better. Especially since apparently people are downloading this shit. Well zShare reckons you are, anyways. What's the deal - who are you guys? How did you find my crazy-ass blog? Tell all your friends!
For today: The Vines - Autumn Shade/Mary Jane (Chopped and Screwed)
The Vines released their new record "Vision Valley" this week, and it'd be harder to imagine a bigger difference between the international critical reception and the local critical reception. Triple J made it album of the week, and I can't find a link, but the Australian's Iain Sheddon gave it 5 stars, which is absolutely ridiculous, even if it is the sort of hyperbole you come to expect from Australian writers writing about Australian music.
I've only heard the full record once - I tried to play it at work on the weekend, but wouldn't you know, the DVD player we use to play CDs refuses to play discs with EMIs copy protection shit on it. So I had to slsk the record - oh the irony. But after one listen through, Vision Valley sounds pretty average. The Vines have a good sound, and every now and then Craig Nicholls can pull out a great melody, but the record is really hampered by the fact that Craig Nicholls pretty much writes two songs over and over again - the loud punky one and the soft dreamy one. So for every decent track like "Anysound" or "Take Me Back," you have pointless riff-fests like "Gross Out" or "Don't Listen To The Radio," which is pretty much a lesser retread of "Highly Evolved." I'm not kidding about it being a retread, either; it sounds like they used the exact same rhythm track and put new lyrics on.
But typically of the Australian media, there are a whole lot of outlets proclaiming this the greatest thing ever and declaring Craig Nicholls some sort of genius. Look, I like a lot of what the Vines do, but Nicholl is not a genius. He's put together one good record and two patchy ones. I know he's got Asperger's and all, but sympathy points don't help his music sound any better.
Australian critics tend to be very favorable toward Australian artists, which effectively lowers the expectations people have of Australian artists. Its an attitude endemic within the entire Australian music industry, from the media to the record labels to the people going to the show; all have the idea that it is important to support Australian music - and apparently whether the music being supported is any good or not is a secondary concern, if it is a concern at all. This creates a culture of mediocrity where local acts aren't requried to be that good; where End Of Fashion releases an album of average guitar pop - the sort of thing that the New Pornographers could write sitting on the can - and get called geniuses for it. It's the reason Jebediah and Grinspoon both released promising debut albums and followed them up with another 3 records that sounded exactly the same. It is the reason Jet and Wolfmother are considered to be songwriting greats rather than talentless derivitive assholes. And that's why, while the rest of the world is able to see that the Vines' new record is only average, the Australian media is proclaiming it a return to form after Winning Days (even though, at the time, the Australian media described Winning Days as a brilliant follow up and another sure fire classic, or some shit like that.)
At the other end of the Vines criticism scale though, is Pitchfork, which kind of gets hyperbolic in the other direction with its Vines disdain. Now, I like Pitchfork - I think they've got some great writing and I think its a great thing that an Internet publication started by a guy from Minneapolis can have the sort of industry influence that it does with groups like Clap Your Hands and the Arcade Fire. And unlike a lot of other Stylus writers, I'm not of the belief that Pitchfork represents everything wrong about music cricitism and Stylus everything right. But sometimes Pfork can be rather predictable. A second string mainstream rapper is pretty much guaranteed to get a 7 from them - the 8+ is reserved for the uncontroversially Great Artists, like Jay-Z and Ghostface, and I guess now T.I. (the King score would poke a hole in my theory, but that record's got so much hype that T.I. is essentially in the league of top-level artists). But Paul Wall - 7.9; Mike Jones - 7.0; Lil' Kim - 7.8; Slim Thug - 7.5. Poor Juelz Santana could only scrape a 6.9, but that's close enough to 7.0. It's not even so much that I disagree with their evaluation, just that with rock music they're at least prepared to take a viewpoint - these scores just seem to be rolling with the rest of the critical mainstream. They certainly don't review a mainstream hip hop record they don't like.
Anyway, the Vines are another sort of band that its easy to predict Pfork's view - they will hate them. The Vines aren't incredibly original, and the groups they knock off aren't at all cool like, say the Strokes or the White Stripes influences. But the records are nowhere near as bad as Pfork says they are - as their Vision Valley review notes, "Around these parts, the Vines have been a farce from the start-- adding up the numbers Pitchfork writers attached to their first two albums would barely get them past 6." The score of 3.4 for the record seems more out of critical distaste for the Vines as a band than a serious evaluation of the record. Vision Valley is at least as good as the Arctic Monkeys record, which the Fork gave a rather positive 7.4 to. That they only gave Highly Evolved a 4.1 is ridiculous. Highly Evolved, unlike the other two Vines records, is actually a good listen - all the singles are great, and most of the rest is enjoyable.
That link I put up the top is my screwed and chopped version of Highly Evolved's "Autumn Shade," one of the Vines's best tracks, and something that works incredibly well screwed. It already sounds all hazy and druggy, and slowed down and cut up it totally gets that sizzurp feel of legitimate screw - you know, not my fake ass shit. And speaking of my fake-ass shit, I think I also did much better with this than the Gang of Four song - the chopping is a lot cleaner, and the whole thing works well enough that it's just as enjoyable as the original.
And just for fun, I stuck some of "Mary Jane" on the end, because other than sizzurp, nothing says screw like weed.
Finally, I figured that since I missed the last couple days, to make up for it, I'd give you one of my tracks, which is just here:
The Saturday Club - Don't Fear The Kid With The Keyboards
I did this a while back when D12 had just released "My Band." Back then, Eminem had still mostly only made good stuff - this was pre-Encore - and even D12 was thought of fairly positively - Purple Pills was a great single. But then they dumped this piece of shit, and damn was I pissed. At first I got an a capella and tried to put a decent beat to it, but I quickly gave up on that idea and made this bastard-pop noise mess. It's the sound of me murdering D12. Have fun with it.
Edit: I just realized that considering Proof's death - what, less than a week after I posted this? - that the previous paragraph contains a rather unfortunate choice of words. I didn't think it'd be right to pretend I never said it, so, just as a clarification: I was, of course, speaking figuratively, in a musical context, and only about that song. Sure, I thought "My Band" sucked, but I still liked Proof as a rapper, as I say a couple posts up. But I do apologize for my extremely unfortunate timing and word choice.
Get the Vines's Vision Valley from Amazon
Get the Vines's Highly Evolved from Amazon
Get D12's D12 World from Amazon
