Wordythinks: White Noise

So, yes. Myself and David “Coyote Trax” Kirk, discussing nothing, everything, and anything. Highlights this time out include:

• some awful, awful stereotyping
• the scariest opening to a podcast ever
• the nail in the coffin of our collective sanity

So go listen, you fool! It’s so easy, it’d almost be harder to not listen! So subscribe on iTunes if you like. Or to our beautiful and useful RSS feed. Or even just right click and save the vanilla MP3. All are good. All are welcome. We love you, you know. Mwah.

Also, go listen to the Drive-By Trucker’s new single.

The Phantom Family Halo’s Sci-Fi Monster Movie Extravaganza

This review took ages to get around to writing, but was surprisingly easy to write once I got around to it. Mostly because I focused more on writing nonsensical nothings instead of actually talking about the music. Oh well. It looks a little like this in places:

Ahem. It’s not that there are no words to describe the Phantom Family Halo’s recent offering: it’s just hard to string whatever words come to mind into a working sentence. Let us be quite clear: the Phantom Family Halo are a bit mad. Deliberately so, perhaps, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that listening to Monoliths & These Flowers Never Die feels a bit like watching an obscure 1950’s sci-fi B-movie about a startlingly absurd race of space-robots coming to Earth to steal 48% of our womenfolk for creepy cross-breeding purposes, while you’re simultaneously being repeatedly punched in the noggin by Doctor Wittgenstein.

So, yeah. You’d better go read, lest that never make a lick of sense to anyone.

Brainthoughts – Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

Do people still use the phrase “Killer App”? I remember it being the term of choice when foaming-at-the-mouth games writers were using Halo to justify buying an X-Box. As far as I can tell, though, it’s gone the way of “talking to the monsters” and “Tomb Raider… with pirates” – a phrase used only as an ironic preamble to a more salient point (much like this paragraph). I think it’s for the best, really. “Killer app” always sounded more like an angry kettle than a ravishing vidja game.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was the PS3’s angry kettle for a long time: one of Sony’s few early, must-play exclusives. The console’s line-up has strengthened considerably since then (probably – I stopped paying much attention fourteen years ago), but since I’m cheap and rubbish, I only just bought a PS3 and Uncharted this past weekend. I understand it’s recently spawned a superior, prettier sequel, but alas, my steadfast morals refuse to allow me to spend more than €30 on a game. Because, like I said: cheap and rubbish.

Either way, since I’m not playing it under the intimidating banner of “THE ONLY GOOD REASON TO OWN A PS3″, the question of whether Drake’s fortunate enough to be considered a Killer Ape matters not. All that matters is whether the game is wonderful. Or not.

It is, of course. But not quite as much as I might have hoped.

Sleater Kinney – The Hot Rock

This is the second of two reviews I wrote for an online magazine that never got published. Because they were skanks busy. Ne’ertheless, you still get to read it here, so observe with yours eyes: a retrospective review of Sleater-Kinney’s splendid Hot Rock album.

I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of you readers have a band that you champion. Well, I say “champion”: I really mean that you breathlessly, frantically espouse their quality to any set of working human ears unfortunate enough to be in your general vicinity at any given moment; an overgenerous, smothering cavalcade of enthusiasm and foaming-at-the-mouth fanaticism that’s as likely to turn your victim off the sound of your voice forever as it is to turn them on to whatever mediocre band you’re promoting. “Oh, but you’ve just got to hear this one song – then Vampire Weekend will be your favouritest band everest!” No, they won’t. Now shut up. Championing bands makes everybody hate you a little bit more than they already do.

I’m given to championing Sleater-Kinney at every possible opportunity, though. Luckily, I escape the widespread hatred (and the blatant hypocrisy) via one easy scientific fact. That fact is this: Sleater-Kinney are the most brilliant thing ever. And of their seven brilliant albums, I’d likely tell people to start with Call The Doctor, One Beat or The Woods. Easy, accessible albums to jump in on. The album I’d tell them to avoid starting with is The Hot Rock. Of course, due to a combination of factors (namely, I had no one to tell me which album to start with, and more pressingly, I’m really rubbish) The Hot Rock is where my Sleater-Kinney collection started.

Wordythinks: Hold Sandwich

Podcast time, dearies! This time, myself and David “Coyote Trax” Kirk discuss such worthy topics as Ham Sandwich proving themselves to be the best band in Ireland, and their forthcoming sophomore album, and also the Hold Steady, and why Craig Finn is one of the best lyricists ever ever ever. We also discuss how Audacity managed to be a big bundle of mess-up, by freezing up right after we finished recording this podcast, thus losing the MP3. Meaning this is take two, and therefore even more influenced by Diplomatico Anejo. I think I might make more gags about hating America, but I’m not entirely sure. I do that a lot.

So, where can you download this splendiferous discussion. Well, the RSS feed is here, the iTunes link is here, and the MP3 can be downloaded directly from here. Use this info wisely, young ones.

Kings of Convenience – Declaration of Dependence

Um. Okay. This is one of two reviews I wrote for an online magazine, which for some reason I never bothered investigating, never got published. Probably because my no-nonsense, all truth, all the time writing style was too close to the bone for them, maaan. What squares. So instead, I shall publish it here. Read on!

Around 5am on Comedy Central (née Paramount Comedy), they sometimes show “comedy” “shorts”. Most of these are as awful as you’d expect, usually amounting to nothing more than Gina Yashere miraculously managing to be less funny in a sketch than in her awful stand-up. One set of sketches, however, always manages to keep me amused: “Bridge Over Memory Lane with Simon & Garfunkel”. It’s not that it has any particularly funny lines, but it’s fantastic at conveying the passive-aggressive hatred that stews between Paul and Art. And passive-aggressive hatred is always funny – just ask my family!

Radio Bile: “Korg don’t make those kinds of organs.”

I don’t mean to complain, or make excuses for the complete lack of posts here, but seriously: I did not expect to get this many hours in my job. Admittedly, it’s hardly the hardest job in the world – I’m putting kids’ clothes on hangers, and hangers on rails, but still, you’re lucky to even get this Radio Bile out of me.

They say “familiarity breeds contempt”, but the more I hear that phrase, the more I dislike it. And not just because I’m a pathetic, desperate contrarian idiot – the phrase is wrong.

Wrong.

Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt. It breeds comfort, warmth, and eventually nostalgia. New things are awful, and potentially dangerous, and sometimes have questionable odours. Shun new things. Avoid them. Instead, you should wrap yourself in the comfortable blanket of the safe and familiar, and softly hum yourself into a dreamless sleep every night for the rest of your life.

And that’s your lot, until I find the time and energy to write about Mass Effect, Shadow of the Colossus, and whatever else I’ve forgotten to write about.

Radio Bile: “Let’s cut to the chase: I made a crap band cry.”

Left it a little late to link to Radio Bile this week. Put it down to laziness and/or… Um… It’s probably just laziness. Still, the thingy looks like this:

Two music matters that I was forced to care about this week: my review of Sweethead’s album, which went up yesterday, and the power of my words. I know that sounds horribly self-deluded, but come on, I’m a music critic: it’s fair to say that as a group, music critics are 45% ego, 45% English degree, and 10% hair. And anyway, I was made to consider the negative power of my words, so it was actually quite a harrowing experience, thank you very much. Let’s cut to the chase: I made a crap band cry. With a review on this very website.

So that’ll do for now. Go read that, and then come back later, when I’ll have thought of something to say about something.

Sweethead – “Sweethead”

I’ve reviewed these guys before. I liked them. I really liked them. But they don’t like me – no, instead they released a fairly staid album, possibly containing one song repeated one… two… twelve times! Luckily, it’s a good enough song, but it’s still pretty underwhelming. Disappointed, I begin this new review like this:

I sure hope the record company suit who decided it’d be a good idea to release Sweethead’s debut album in early November is picking bullet fragments out of his own navicular bone right now. Sweethead, if you didn’t know, are the side project of Queens of the Stone Age’s multi-purpose axeman, Troy Van Leeuwen. The very same Troy Van Leeuwen whose QOTSA cohort, Josh Homme, chose to release his side project (a little-known group called Them Crooked Vultures – look ‘em up, and remember, you heard it here first, yes sir) in early November. There’s no way Sweethead are getting any of the QOTSA-side-project attention. It’s a little bit like if John The Baptist had come back from the dead the same week as Jesus, or All Saints reforming the same week as Sleater-Kinney, or a street magician doing his best trick while another guy moons a constable. Everyone’s looking the other way, guys.

So you should already be reading the full thing, right? Go on, click the quote. Dooooo it.

Radio Bile: “Unendingly, gruesomely stupid, like a lobotomised, shaved badger”

Eagle-eyed Twitter users can play a fun game with this week’s Radio Bile: note all the jokes I came up with last night, and ended up using again in this article. I didn’t say it was a fun game. Also, please try not to take the first bit too personally, even though I wrote it with you in mind. You.

People are stupid. Unendingly, gruesomely stupid, like a lobotomised, shaved badger – every last one of us a fetid, gormless lump of uselessness.

I apologise for the crass generalisation there, but really, it needed to be said. And really, I should have said it in big bold letters: a collection of blithe, oblivious pixels, squatted thoughtlessly right there on your screen, taunting the entire laughable idea of your pointless existence. A person is just a massive stockpile of meat and sweat, given two arms and an ugly face, granted the ability to totter around meaninglessly by the aimless dalliances of evolution, and cursed to be forever incapable of anything resembling intelligent thought in large groups. People are stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.

YOU.