When you pick up twenty-five albums in three months, it's inevitable that some percentage of them will disappoint, if not outright suck. For me, these six albums let me down, and/or have almost completely evaporated from my memory.
Most disappointing were My Morning Jacket and Pas/Cal, both albums I was looking forward to and had high hopes for. MMJ seemed to get slagged for taking too many risks on Evil Urges, but in fact it was all the risky songs—essentially, the first three or four tracks and the album closer—that succeeded for me; everything in between was boring, trite, and in spots completely insipid. Evil Urges is easily the band's most uneven album to date. As for Pas/Cal, I think I summed it up in my review of the record. In short, they tried way too hard to be interesting, sacrificing nearly all of the enjoyment.
Tied & Tickled Trio's 2007 album Aelita was another record I'd been waiting on for a while. Their previous full-length, 2003's Observing Systems, has proven to have surprising longevity in my rotation. I find the group's seamless blend of electronica and jazz to outdo just about everyone else who I've heard attempt it. So why, after all these years, would they choose to remove all the jazz elements? There are no horns to speak of on Aelita, nor any noticeably acoustic instruments. The joke of the T&TT has always been that they are a septet, not a trio; here, they sound like a solo project. It's a mediocre electronica record.
Beck: I can't say much more than I already have about Modern Guilt. I'll just offer this: I've never counted myself a great fan of his—I like him, but I also don't typically give much of a shit about what he's up to—and I don't even really recall how this album made it into my household. I also don't recall the last time I listened to it. Trying to psyche myself up for his appearance at Hollywood Bowl last week, along with Spoon and MGMT, I put all three bands' albums in a playlist and hit shuffle. Every time something from Modern Guilt came on, I reflexively hit the skip button. (P.S.: his Bowl performance was fairly boring as well.)
Margot & the Nuclear So & So's: based on one outstanding song downloaded years ago, "Skeleton Key," I picked up this album which more often than not doesn't hold up against that track's quality. As I've said before about this record: it's all earnestness, no authenticity.
Finally, Coldplay. To tell the truth I didn't even really care about buying this album, so to call it a disappointment is unfair. Somehow, despite not caring about Coldplay since some time around A Rush of Blood to the Head, I still own all of their records. In Viva la Vida's case, my brilliant wife and I were vacationing in Hawaii, where we'd rented a convertible (for the record: Hawaii is sooo much better with a convertible). But we had no music and our only selection of CDs to choose from came from a slashing-its-music-section Starbucks. Viva la Vida it was. The only real standout is the title track. There are a couple other earworms (notably "Lost!"), but it is otherwise a pretty uninspired album. There were times, driving on the road to Hana, that I found myself wishing I had X+Y instead. So that's saying something.
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