more music everyone likes that i don't

i've been drowning lately trying to keep up with new music. somehow. there's seemingly not that much coming out that i'm that interested in, and with the cardinals no longer touring (and i don't download wilco night-to-night; i love them, but they don't vary enough each night to make the bandwidth, time, and CDs worth it), i thought i'd have time to catch up with recordings i've downloaded, as well as CDs i've bought (half.com is a wonderful thing).

i was wrong.

but, anyway, i tried some new things this past weekend. the internet has been screaming for awhile about the dirty projecters' new album, bitte orca, as well as the low anthem's oh my god, charlie darwin. also, i worship at the altar of white regularly, so i had to check the dead weather's horehound.

i listened to all three, and i can honestly say i don't really care to listen to any of them any more times. i didn't hate them, but the first two merely affirmed what i've been fearing for the last few years: that now there is an established "indie rock" sound, and you can draw critical acclaim by manipulating and tweaking that sound slightly, and writing some good songs.

don't get me wrong, both of these albums have solid songs on them. but as you can easily tell by hearing tweedy play "i am trying to break your heart" solo acoustic and then by listening to the studio version of the same track, a lot can change in a studio. i would listen to a lot of these songs played by someone using a piano or an acoustic guitar. and i would like them. and i appreciate the experimentation in sounds on these two albums as well. i really do. i just don't like the results. it's sort of like combining three flavors of kool-aid and ending up with shitty-tasting kool-aid, when cherry kool-aid would have worked fine by itself. especially in the projectors' case, i had a lot of wtf moments when some synthesized sound or nonrhythm would pop into a track, because it didn't seem to have any real purpose in the song as a whole to me. it sounded more like "well, we heard someone else popular do this once on an album, so let's drop it in here". plus, i'm just not into that "it's cool to be miserable" lyric bullshit anymore. i'm 28 now...i don't really have a lot of extra time to spend not making the best of things. i guess it's cool if other people do, i just don't want to hear about it.

the dead weather hit me about how i thought they would. solid, well-crafted songs, presented through a genre of music i'm really not that interested in. i mean, i love the white stripes for their dirty, muddy, bangy-ness. but the dead weather is just too dirty, muddy, and bangy for my taste. the guitars are frustrating because, while they aren't bad, you know jack white is sitting like three feet from them and not playing them. he's solid enough on drums, but when you play this type of garage-rock blues, who cares about the drums anyway, as long as they're loud? and i could take or leave the lead singer's approach to these songs vocally. the one thing that the raconteurs and the stripes have always provided, even on songs that i don't like, is a turn of phrase, turn of melody, bridge...something interesting and unique, something that makes you do an aural double-take when you hear it the first time. i had no moments like that on this album. it's well-made, and i'm sure if the sound is your bag of tea (or whatever) then you'll love it...but to me it's just sort of boring.

as usual, i'm totally willing to be talked out of any of these opinions.