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koganbot"Now here I stand, and I'm still just that girl, I'm following my heart, in this amazing, crazy world." Ack! And this is the second song in which she follows her heart; the first time she had an excuse; it was someone else who wrote the words. There's no way this album makes my ten-best list. Just no way. Even its having three of the best singles of the year doesn't make up for all the little-girl voicings and the rote soul-searching of the rest (oh, I know, the lyrics are heartfelt, and she means them). I can and have voted albums with awful songs on 'em - I'm made of strong stuff, I've done it, you can look it up - but I need five or six amazing songs, not just one amazing song and two really good ones and most of the rest being more-or-less OK to dull. (So is Tisdale an example of what's right with pop - that this only somewhat-talented girl and these somewhat-more-talented songwriters and producers can create amazingness - or what's wrong with pop, that we can't get her to do better or can't come up with better people to do it?)
I actually like Tisdale's energy. But I think she's fundamentally an actress who sings, which means she's conveying a personality and expressing what the lyrics are supposed to be about but she doesn't know how to let sound come in and take her - or have her voice come in and take us - so the heave and throb of music isn't in her. It is in (or is found by) Rotem and DioGuardi et al., who can give her great gobs of bass and vibrating harmonies, moments at a time.
Last night I listened to a few Naked Brothers Band songs in the background while doing my taxes; better than I expected, but I expected it to be terrible, to be blah and bland and boring; instead was easy and mild and sweet. I will listen further after the polls are sent.
The Hives The Black and White Album: garage punks who keep things light while charging around with a faux cantankerousness that keeps things moving. I listened to seven tracks, will listen to more but I've a list due so these guys will have to wait because they're not going to be on it.
Posted this on rolling country:
I did my first listen to Little Big Town's A Place To Land. Am genuinely puzzled that Xhuxk and Chris like it so much, in that the four killer songs from the previous LBT alb kill anything on this. Didn't hear one I liked until the fourth track here (about poor Evangeline who suffers verbal abuse in silence and denial) and I wasn't really whomped with emotion until the final two tracks: "Lonely Enough," where Karen Fairchild asks God to bring her dead lover back to life, and "Fury," where the band finally makes like the Southern rockers they always have the potential to be. Maybe the whomping came from the cumulative effects of the earlier tracks, so more feeling could come on a second listen, perhaps. But Eagles and Fleetwood Mac were way more scintillating in their California harmonies than Little Big Town are, and I still don't understand why Little Big Town choose to diddle around on acoustics when they've got potential monster hooks. I did enjoy the totally muddled theology. Seems to me that if you're the all-knowing and all-powerful God you would know what it is like to feel lonely, especially since Karen insists that the Almighty can do anything. (I myself can't figure out how an almighty being can know what it's like to be uncertain and lonely, but then I'm not an all-knowing being; maybe the big guy sent his son to feel such things and report back.) I was amused by Phillip Sweet's modest ambitions in "Vapor": "He was here only 33 years but his life changed the world/And he gave up all he had/I want to leave a legacy like that." Well, work on your harmonies and get some people to chronicle your life and maybe you'll have a shot.
Didn't notice any deliberately ridiculous and funny metaphors this time, nothing like the last album's "You plowed me like a tractor/And you used me up and put me out to pasture/And I'm left to eat your dust," though I haven't been following the words with great attention on these first listens, so I could have missed some. I think "Firebird Fly" - which rocks pretty well - was meant to be metaphoric or parable-like in an amusing way, but I didn't manage to get the gist.
I actually like Tisdale's energy. But I think she's fundamentally an actress who sings, which means she's conveying a personality and expressing what the lyrics are supposed to be about but she doesn't know how to let sound come in and take her - or have her voice come in and take us - so the heave and throb of music isn't in her. It is in (or is found by) Rotem and DioGuardi et al., who can give her great gobs of bass and vibrating harmonies, moments at a time.
Last night I listened to a few Naked Brothers Band songs in the background while doing my taxes; better than I expected, but I expected it to be terrible, to be blah and bland and boring; instead was easy and mild and sweet. I will listen further after the polls are sent.
The Hives The Black and White Album: garage punks who keep things light while charging around with a faux cantankerousness that keeps things moving. I listened to seven tracks, will listen to more but I've a list due so these guys will have to wait because they're not going to be on it.
Posted this on rolling country:
I did my first listen to Little Big Town's A Place To Land. Am genuinely puzzled that Xhuxk and Chris like it so much, in that the four killer songs from the previous LBT alb kill anything on this. Didn't hear one I liked until the fourth track here (about poor Evangeline who suffers verbal abuse in silence and denial) and I wasn't really whomped with emotion until the final two tracks: "Lonely Enough," where Karen Fairchild asks God to bring her dead lover back to life, and "Fury," where the band finally makes like the Southern rockers they always have the potential to be. Maybe the whomping came from the cumulative effects of the earlier tracks, so more feeling could come on a second listen, perhaps. But Eagles and Fleetwood Mac were way more scintillating in their California harmonies than Little Big Town are, and I still don't understand why Little Big Town choose to diddle around on acoustics when they've got potential monster hooks. I did enjoy the totally muddled theology. Seems to me that if you're the all-knowing and all-powerful God you would know what it is like to feel lonely, especially since Karen insists that the Almighty can do anything. (I myself can't figure out how an almighty being can know what it's like to be uncertain and lonely, but then I'm not an all-knowing being; maybe the big guy sent his son to feel such things and report back.) I was amused by Phillip Sweet's modest ambitions in "Vapor": "He was here only 33 years but his life changed the world/And he gave up all he had/I want to leave a legacy like that." Well, work on your harmonies and get some people to chronicle your life and maybe you'll have a shot.
Didn't notice any deliberately ridiculous and funny metaphors this time, nothing like the last album's "You plowed me like a tractor/And you used me up and put me out to pasture/And I'm left to eat your dust," though I haven't been following the words with great attention on these first listens, so I could have missed some. I think "Firebird Fly" - which rocks pretty well - was meant to be metaphoric or parable-like in an amusing way, but I didn't manage to get the gist.
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Date: 2007-12-20 11:54 pm (UTC)I'd vote for the latter. As you say, Tisdale's an actress who sings but unlike the Duff and Cyrus, she doesn't seem to have any particular passion for her music. I'm sure it's lovely for her but it seems like she's more excited about getting to play a popstar than what the music's actually like. She's one of those things where I want to bang my head against a wall somewhere upon hearing the product because that's all it is, a product and that is what's wrong with pop when producers etc. are lazy enough to think it's the desirable one that will be alright because it's just pop music etc. Frustrating, more than anything because it's one of those things that reminds me of all the godawful indie gobbins that's floating about the UK charts these days and just sounds like 'you know what, people still really buy stuff that sounds a bit like the Libertines.' Tisdale's just a HSM completist project, same as the godawful indie is an NME one.
That and she gets right up my nose with all the 'wow guys this is so special' lyricism you mention above. It is not my gothy bag.
I am packing simultaneously to writing this so excuse all the continuity errors.