Most Disappointing Albums of 2008
Disappointing, not worst. (Who cares about the worst?) Most of these are not truly awful, just not very interesting, or seriously below the act’s previous standards.
I enjoyed his debut, which was derivative but pleasant, with a nice fuzziness. The words and vocals on this one, however, prove supremely annoying, and minus the fuzziness his take on Minimalism is much less attractive.
I loved the keyboard-centricity of early Koufax, lost touch after two albums, and am horrified by what they’ve become: just another overwrought indie-rawk band. There are too many clichés here for me to care anymore.
I’m in the minority here, in that anybody who cares about this seems to love it – and it’s The Wire’s #1 album of the year. But for me, the interest of the music is overwhelmed by how much I dislike the rapper’s voice and flow.
Can’t exactly blame Hedberg for this, him being dead and all. Yeah, it was his performance, full of lame bits going nowhere, never getting into a rhythm, a bad parody of Hedberg’s former brilliance (though there are some clever one-liners scattered among the dross). But he’s not responsible for issuing it.
A modern classical composer whose work I have enjoyed in the past devotes an album to music written to be used as ringtones. How could anyone think that was a good idea?
I like all their stuff before this, but this is slick and occasionally infused with poorly executed hip-hop and electronica moves. There are good songs here, but none of them is satisfactorily shaped; “Biko” is let by the crappy machine beats, “Halo” is given too muscular a style to work with Kele Okereke’s singing, and so on.
Some have been singing hosannas for this, but I don’t hear it. The songs don’t interest me, the style is generic, and the production makes them sound tight-assed. Ditch the keyboard player and get back to punk, I say.
Gone are the spacey soundscapes I love, replaced by faux-Coldplay (but sung by a guy with a ravaged voice) with no hooks.
I’m a huge Lanegan fan, but this is just boring. Without interesting songs, the timbre of his great voice is not enough.
Stills’s voice is shot (or at least it was when this was recorded), so “For What It’s Worth” is a low point. There are some horribly out-of-tune harmonies on “Wooden Ships” and “Teach Your Children”; there and elsewhere they sound sloppy and under-rehearsed. And having them sing in unison on Young’s new songs, which was the point of this tour, is superfluous. I do like the rugged jam on the title track, though.
