What’s the story with Concept Albums?

So i’ve moaned and groaned to loads of people before about tweens being into bands solely for their appearance and looks, and that the kids these days do not bother to read into the music, or even bother to listen to it. This practically takes away from the bands reason for existing, which is a shame, unless the band sings about why they are hot, then it starts to get  stupid. This is also why I love being old, well older.

The Concept album is what is at the bottom of my rant, records with a back story, something you can actually think about. People these days just do not care for concept albums, and I feel they’re a dying… thing. See, I can’t even think of how to describe it. One album of honorable mention would be From Them, Through Us, To You by Chicago rock band Madina Lake. From Them… is the continuation and follow up to their breakthrough EP The Disappearance Of Adalia from 2006, and there are still two more albums in the story to come. The story is simple yet complex in that is sends the listener on an investigation into the mysterious happenings of the small town called Madina Lake (yes, you’ve obviously made the connection, good stuff). Flaky lover and the town socialite, Adalia, disappears one night after the towns annual masquerade ball in the 1950s. Your job is to find clues throughout the albums, on websites and even the album artwork, to piece together what you think happened that night. There are a few shady characters here and there, including Forrest, a key suspect in the investigation and Pandora, one of Adalia’s friends – the rest i’ll leave to you if you’re into that kind of thing. I would highly recommend it though, because if you’re not into the whole investigation sort of thing, it is a good album to simply just listen to if you’re looking for something new.

I suppose that I should mention another concept album, to give you a full overview of the whole idea. I’m so going to get killed for this… but it has to be said that The Black Parade was pretty poop for me. The whole story about The Black Parade (My Chemical Romance if you did not realise) is that the main character, The Patient, dies and he goes to his interpretation of heaven, which is his happy place, which happens to be a parade his father took him to when he was younger, blah blah, i’m sure you’ve all heard it at some point in your life. The concept was OK when I first got the album, I was really into it and before you even think about it you had better not call me ‘emo’. If you ever meet me, you will see that I am so far from emo that yeah, you get the idea. So the album was good, had some good tracks, it pulled at the heart strings, especially the song Cancer which makes everyone cry, apparently. But there came a time when the novelty and idea of the album wore off, and that was when it became so serious. The whole uniform thing, and the dying of the hair, this is a clear example of how not to make a concept record. I’m actually really dreading the reaction to this but whatever, you know.

There are also the more popular, more well known concept albums, like The Wall or Deloused In The Comatorium by The Mars Volta (heck yes, I went there), but it’s suprising that Google tells me that a band, apparently called “Spock’s Beard”, released a concept record in 2002. Oh Google, you so funny.

Matchbox 20 live review 2008

Before you nitpick: This was for a review column, thus the lack of paragraphing.

Matchbox Twenty are a band with a career spanning over ten years, with countless top 40 singles and high-charting albums, so a lot was to be expected when they played the Vector Arena in April.
Thirsty Merc opened for them, and they were pretty good. I had seen them a couple of years ago, and they have made huge progress in their stage performance and sound, I was very tempted to go out and buy their album. The lead singer (sorry, I don’t know his name and CBF googling right now) is so talented, playing guitar and keyboard. Maybe i’m just easily ‘wowed’. Then they finished, obviously, and we waited for the headliners to take the stage. During the show I took loads of notes (who does that?) but you have to understand that I have the worst memory, I only just manage to remember my best friends’ birthdays, and I wanted to make it absolutely certain that I didn’t miss anything. However, Matchbox were quite unforgettable, cliche, yeah. You may be getting frustrated (I am) that I constantly write nice things about whatever I write about, but there’s no point in denying that Matchbox 20 were one of the best bands I have ever seen live, & i’ve been to a fair few shows in my life. To begin with, Rob Thomas had extremely polished vocals, every note was crystal clear and he’s, what, 39 years old? He’s still hot. Shut up. The thing I enjoyed most about the show was all the ‘rule breaking’ that occured. Mothers who attended with their 12 year old daughters must have been shocked when Rob said the “F” word. But the plain fact is that there is nothing they could do about it, unless they wanted to go Tana Umaga on their asses. I say Evs, get over it, watch some clips of Mindless Self Indulgence on Youtube, then you’ll be shocked. But the big tough persona that Rob Thomas put on didn’t really buy for me, especially when he said that their piano sounded like “ass”. At one point during the show, Rob also did the whole “light up your cellphones” thing, that has slowly taken over the traditional lighting of the lighters in packed out venues, but cellphones are so pretty! It also proved a point that no matter the rules, chicks are going to stick phones down their tops anyway. The actual set was great, they played all the favourites such as 3am, Unwell and Disease, which I still have in my head at this very moment. They also played Let’s See How Far We’ve Come, the first single off their latest album, Exile on Mainstream, however, with each gig there are always going to be the negatives, and maybe i’m just nit-picking but here are the downers about Matchbox. I was really upset when, the next day, I looked at the videos I had taken and discovered that their sound was not the best. The drum kit was turned up so loud, it was louder than everything else which is really sad as the guitars could not be heard that clearly and the overall sound was distorted, obviously. 7UP costed $5 per bottle, plus they took the bottle lids off you so that you couldn’t ‘hurt’ anyone else with it. Personally, it’s a bit pathetic if you get K.O’d by a bottle lid.  And last but not least: I didn’t know the words to the majority of the songs. Make sure you really like the band before you go, otherwise you’ll feel like a dick when everyone else is singing along and you’re not. My mum paid for the ticket (thanks mum!) so, as a struggling student, I wasn’t going to say no to free stuff. Overall, the show was pretty good and I would definitely recommend you go next time they’re here.

Date published: TBA

Young Ones are Taking Over!

What’s with all these young fries getting record deals? Some I am just unable to comprehend as to how they got signed, such as the terrible Miley Cyrus (Sorry to any Hannah Montana fans, if there are any). She’s just so whiney and weenie, and I don’t care if some kids show catapulted her to fame, not every Disney channel star has to make an album. But at the other end of the spectrum, there are amazing “child” singers, only classed so because of their age, such as Lil Mama, Keke Palmer, Jojo and two in particular who I think deserve special mention; Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown. These artists are basically changing the status quo within the music industry, with age no longer being a factor.  With all of these musicians being under 20 years old, it has started a signing frenzy, not only in the pop area, but young bands such as Enter Shikari and Arctic Monkeys have too been signed while still quite young. What does this mean for the future of music, and are older musicians possibly in danger? (Watch out Madonna, just because you produce a song with Timberlake doesn’t guarantee you’ll still be the “shit” tomorrow).

If you don’t know who Jordin Sparks is, then where have you been for the past year? She was the winner of the last American Idol contest, beating out thousands of others, including my personal favourite Blake Lewis. She was even the youngest winner so far, only 17 when she claimed the title. But even though her album hasn’t been released here, and even though her singles are getting hardly any airplay on television and radio (come on NZ!), she’s still huge around the world and online. It is insane. Countless websites are dedicated to her every move, the press go nuts over her and her non-stop sellout tours around America are so successful, she probably needs to book some more dates to satisfy the raging crowds. She even got to work with Chris Brown, something little girls around the world envy her for. No Air is climbing it’s way up the NZ digital charts, currently sitting at number 6. It’s definitely one of those songs you should keep an eye, or an ear, out for as it will become one of those things you can’t avoid. You will find yourself helpless as you sing along to it, but do not fear! It is completely normal. What will shock you, however, is the realisation that you experience when you remember that this song is sung by a 17 and an 18 year old. Huge vocals, for people that young. Paula Abdul usually says that someone that age needs more time to develop. You are wrong this time Paula, but you can redeem yourself by complimenting their clothing (ever noticed that on Idol?).

That nicely links to the next youngin’ i’m going to mention: Chris Brown. Hailing all the way from Tappahannock in America obviously, he made his first impression on the music industry with the very successful, very pop, single Run It which had little fifth formers around the country crumpin’ and poppin’ till they could pop no more (trust me, people had it playing around my entire school at the time). Chris has shown his diversity with his second album, Exclusive. A very mature mix of RnB and Hip Hop, with something for everyone, from the highly catchy Wall To Wall to the pop love ballad With You. Don’t deny your love for this song, you know you love it. With all this said, you would expect this amazing product to come from someone a bit older, such as Pharrell or Lionel Ritchie (lulz) but Chris is only 18 years old! Surely the music being produced is trying to tell us something, right? Such as the trials and tribulations of teenage-hood and the fact that kids are just growing up too fast these days, yes?

We’ve already been digesting music from these young folk for the past couple of years, but I believe there is plenty more of that to come. These emerging artists definitely have talent, are recieving recognition and shows like American Idol are developing that talent into incredible things aka Jordin Sparks. It seems older musicians may be screwed in the Pop genre stakes, to be honest. Better luck next time, Madonna.

Date Published: TBA

[Has been published, just I cbf looking up the date of the issue it's in]

Jess’ guide to Electropop

Long ago, when fluoro was dying down and the world was entering into the “grunge” fad, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade was getting it’s ass kicked by Batman at the box office, and The Monkees disbanded (only the first in many attempts to do this), the most amazing thing happened… I was born!

To get to the point, I am Jess and I basically have free reign over all of you (sort of). I shall be writing about anything and everything to do with music basically, & I believe that I will be doing you all a great service this year – keeping you up to date on what music is cool and what is not, and any new emerging talent I pick up on. Hopefully by the end of the year I will have some kind of influence over you all. Uh. I mean you’ll totally be able to make your own decisions and stuff.

Anyway, todays topic of one-(wo)man discussion is “Electropop”! You may be thinking “Uh.. what?”, however you are most likely more subconsciously aware of it than you may think, you just haven’t realised it yet. Electropop is actually quite prominent in society today, with New Zealand music television channels and radio stations jumping on the Fueled By Ramen (FBR) band-wagon, which is known to produce high amounts of electropop-inspired bands. The reason for the FBR franchise being so successful, is the influence it has over the “tweens” in this country, who are drawn in by the electropop “appeal”. Cool, I have the official right to call them “tweens”, we’re in uni now, right? We have so much more right to be elitist, it’s AuSM (pun intended).

Shying away from terrible first year puns, Electropop is what I like to think would happen when a big blob of “pop” were to insult a big nasty-looking blob of “electro” (for lack of a better word), therefore egging the electro blob on and engaging in physical combat. On impact, it would create something like the “big bang” theory – a big oozing mess that is one of the many music revolutions of our time.

It started out in the British underground world of music in the late 1970s, with heavy influence from the likes of David Bowie and Kraftwerk,  and their albums Heroes and Trans-Europe Express, respectively. The genre gives the feeling of slight darkness, relying heavily on the lyrics to tell the story of whatever the artists is trying to convey across, and this in turn works with the actual music creating suitable ambience to fit with the story. However, it is said that Electropop should not be confused with Disco-synth, that’s a completely different story.  If you’re thinking right now of Blondie, then you are seriously mistaken. If you were to strip down the genre, you would find that it is basically pop, intensified with keyboards, synthesisers and programming to fill out the overall sound, which is nice if what you’re looking for is something to tap your foot along to, but at the root of it all it is a pop song with catchy tunes and a universal message within the lyrics. It has also set up a base for other genres, such as power pop, techno pop and even “electro clash”, to evolve in their own way off to the side. We can see these becoming more and more evident in todays music scene, with bands such as American Hi-Fi and Barenaked Ladies taking on the challenge. The genre of electropop has been carried over into the present day, by bands such as Panic At The Disco (I mean the real songs in the middle of A Fever…) and groups like The Veronicas.

Now, don’t come running at me with flaming torches, wanting to burn me at the stake. I actually like their new stuff, as you can definitely hear the Electropop influence. They have even admitted their new record is influenced by that whole movement. Untouched, from the new album Hook Me Up, is a current favourite of mine of the moment, especially with the fast and catchy (or annoying and repetitive, however you wish to look at it) selection of words in each verse. The thing about this song that gets me is the actual instrumental sound, which stays very true to it’s “requirements” of the genre. The clash of violins against a very fast-paced drum beat, mixing with the guitar hooks and programming is a real innovation in music, keeping that gate of fresh ideas open for the future of electropop.

Whether you see this as a good thing is up to you, but it seems to me that 2008 may be full of this type of music, so you may as well get used to it.

So if you’re looking for something that you can dance and sing along to, when the heart of the song is a good old pop song then Electropop is probably for you, and so I recommend these bands to you:
The Veronicas, Bloc Party, The Brunettes, HelloGoodbye, Powerspace, Angels & Airwaves and Midnight Juggernauts.
(Bands suggested are based purely on opinion)

Right well now is my time to sign off! I hope this has informed some of you about at least something to do with Electropop. If not, then there is absolutely no hope for you at all.

Word Count: 892

Date published: TBA

Preface

• I’m in love with prefaces
• I will post my articles here that I write for my university magazine, Debate.
• It’s just as a keepsake or a record for future generations to read, once I move on from the internet
• & will also mean freeing up space on my computer
• Maybe one day my articles will be deemed historically important
• & this could maybe even score me an internship