Silly Joel

The Long, Slow Demise of Kings of Leon

Kings of Leon’s eighth studio album When You See Yourself dropped March 5th of this year, and the world of music fandom met that release with little more than a collective shrug. That’s no surprise – the band hasn’t had a sizeable hit since Obama was in office. The obnoxious radio staples “Sex on Fire” and “Use Somebody” were released over a decade ago, back when we were all different people,…

30 Years On: Pearl Jam’s “Ten”

Of the original wave of “grunge” stars, Pearl Jam was always the most earnest. Most of the early ’90s grunge bands wrote songs dealing with dark subject matter like suicide and drug abuse, but no band was so righteously outraged at the state of America (perhaps the state of all of humanity in 1991) as Pearl Jam, whose classic, mega-hit debut Ten married razor guitar riffs, chunky bass lines, and…

In Defense Of: Smashmouth

Smashmouth is known for many things: being prominently featured in Shrek, having their music meme-ified in the current moment, scoring some massive hits at the peak of the boy band/teen diva craze of the late ’90s/early 2000s (all the more incredible considering their very un-boy-band aesthetic). But they will forever be defined, and rightly so, by their gargantuan hit “All-Star,” a song that…

When Rage Against The Machine Was Banned from the Radio

When the Capitol was overrun by Trump fanboys for a demonstration of revolutionary cosplay on January 6th, many Americans were shocked by this seemingly extreme outburst of irrational fanaticism. But I remember the George W. Bush years, so I wasn’t shocked so much as amused by the waves of nostalgia washing over me as I watched the Capitol crisis unfold on CNN. I had seen this kind of irrational…

30 Years On: Nirvana’s “Nevermind”

Those of us who grew up in ’90s middle-class suburbia probably remember the ’90s as a kaleidoscopic fever dream of Nickelodeon cartoons, Super Nintendo games and Will Smith-led Hollywood blockbusters. The ’90s seem to be popularly remembered in the collective American consciousness as the Last Hurrah, the big “1999”-Prince-style dance party before the apocalypse of 9/11 and the resulting…

Pizza Time: Weezer’s “OK Human”

My relationship with Weezer is like my relationship with pizza: I used to love it as a teenager, but as a 31-year-old, I don’t often find myself craving it. Maybe it’s simply because I’m getting too old (oh the heartburn!). Maybe it’s because my tastes (both gastronomical and musical) have become more refined over the years (but not too refined – I still think The Darkness is pretty great). But I…

Sugar Rush: Pom Poko’s “Cheater”

Pom Poko is a Norwegian rock band that, genre-wise, is a bit hard to pin down, largely because they pull their influences from so many different eras: ’70s power-pop, ’80s new wave, ’90s alternative, early 2000s garage rock and later 2000s twee pop, etc. Their focus on guitar sounds rather than guitar riffs aligns them a bit more with the noisier pop of Deerhoof, but their emphasis on vocal hooks…

Despair and Dream: Viagra Boys’ “Welfare Jazz”

It may be only a month into the new year, but the Viagra Boys’ Welfare Jazz is already on my “best of 2021” list. This group of Swedish rockers reminds me of everything great that still exists in well-executed rock n’ roll – its compelling sleaziness, its self-effacing humor, its chunky bass and punchy beats. This is all immediately apparent on the opening track “Ain’t Nice,” which is, lyrically,…

Death of the Live Album: Arctic Monkeys’ “Live at the Royal Albert Hall”

The live rock album has been dying a slow death for decades now. It peaked in the ’70s with such stellar releases as The Who’s Live at Leeds, Deep Purple’s Made in Japan and Cheap Trick’s At Budokan (among many other stellar releases), and reached its unofficial end in the ’90s, perhaps with Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged serving as its swan song. There have certainly been exceptions to this trend (My…

30 Years On: Temple of the Dog

Temple of the Dog and the group’s one album of the same name doubled as both a wake for Andrew Wood (lead singer of Mother Love Bone; see the last “30 Years On” essay for more details on that band) and a harbinger of grunge to come: the band was comprised of two members of Soundgarden (lead singer Chris Cornell and drummer Matt Cameron) and four future members of Pearl Jam (bassist Jeff Ament,…

What Even Is “Conscious Hip-Hop”?

I was listening to the hip-hop duo Blu & Exile the other day, and as I was listening, I thought to myself, “this music is the very definition of ‘conscious hip-hop.'” And then I stopped myself and asked, “wait, why do I think this is ‘conscious hip-hop’? And what does ‘conscious hip-hop’ even mean”? The duo’s excellent new album Miles is about many things, but some of the prominent themes regard…

Everything Sucks in 2020

“Everything Sucks” is one of the handful of pretty great third wave ska songs written and performed by the band Reel Big Fish in the mid-’90s. It’s not quite as strong as their true classic “Sell Out,” but it does perfectly capture the height of ’90s slackerdom, the cool ironic detachment that soon gave way to the cornball sentimentality of late ’90s boy bands and teenage divas. “Everything…

30 Years On: Mother Love Bone’s “Apple”

Mother Love Bone is a band that poses one of the great “what if” questions of ’90s rock – what if lead singer Andrew Wood hadn’t succumbed to a heroin overdose just days before the release of their debut LP? The band also consisted of two future founding members of Pearl Jam (Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament), so even if Mother Love Bone was met with only moderate (or minor) success, those members…

Beauty and Destruction: Fleet Foxes’ “Shore”

Apologies for the corniness that follows, but one of the more magical abilities of music that separates it from other art forms is the way in which it can transport you in time, awakening dormant memories and teleporting you back to the first time you were introduced to a heartwarming melody or irresistible guitar riff. The first time I listened to Fleet Foxes new LP Shore, I was driving down a…