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One-Liners: A miniature take on selected Filter Magazine reviews
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(Go to Filter-Mag.com or pick up Filter Magazine’s Holiday Issue for full reviews of the albums covered here.)
Reviews
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DEERHOOF
Friend Opportunity 91%
KILL ROCK STARS
A beautifully crafted puzzle of WTF?
delivered by art rock’s most eccentric
and eclectic squad.
120 DAYS
120 Days
90%
VICE
A post-punk, post-rave, post-pre-
Armageddon masterpiece of sleazy,
chaos-worshipping industrial rock.
TOM WAITS
Orphans...
90%
ANTI-
Good, sad and ugly: three discs that testify
to Wait’s immortal junky brilliance.
CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH
Some Loud Thunder 89%
CYHSY kick in the speaker cones and
bang out a bloody mix of F-you aimed
at the sophomore slump.
JOANNA NEWSOM
Ys
89%
DRAG CITY
An award-worthy original, bewildering
and jaw-dropping, ambitious
and awesome.
THE WALKMEN
Pussy Cats
89%
RECORD COLLECTION
N.Y.C.’s best-known boozehounds find
success covering a cover record, paying
homage to Lennon, Nilsson and themselves.
WILLIE NELSON
Songbird
89%
LOST HIGHWAY
With the help of Ryan Adams, our
drug-busted hero surprises with his
most relevant record in recent memory.
SWAN LAKE
Swan Lake
87%
JAGJAGUWAR
Canada produces yet another experimental
indie supergroup: one part New
Pornos, one part Wolf Parade, one part Frog Eyes.
MALAJUBE
Trompe-L’Oeil
86%
DARE TO CARE
Canada keeps gate-crashing, and this
time it’s francophones with an affinity
for well-layered indie-rock. Sacré Bleu!
PJ HARVEY
The Peel Sessions... 86%
ISLAND
High expectations are met with moderate
results, leaving a lesson learned:
Stick to your own blues, sister.
YOUTH GROUP
Casino Twilight Dogs 84%
ANTI-
Taking cues from The O.C.’s dramatic
flare, these Aussies aren’t about to reinvent
rock for the sweater set.
GOLDFRAPP
We Are Glitter 82%
MUTE
G-Frapp sets the abstinence movement
back a couple years via a collection of
club-humping remixes.
…TRAIL OF DEAD
So Divided
80%
INTERSCOPE
The ever grandiloquent TOD deliver a
masterfully woven set of almosts.
DAMIEN RICE
9
77%
WARNER
A hard, depressing listen accessible
only if your girlfriend just died in a
puppy-related car crash.
FILTER
ALBUM
RATINGS
TENACIOUS D
The Pick of Destiny 61%
EPIC
They are not angels; they are but men,
and men do make mistakes.
91-100% a great album
81-90% above par, below genius
71-80% respectable, but flawed
61-70% not in my CD player
Below 60% please God, tell us why
OF MONTREAL
Hissing Fauna, Are 86%
You the Destroyer?
POLYVINYL
If last year’s sublime Sunlandic Twins
was Kevin Barnes’ ode to “Oslo in the Summertime,”
Hissing Fauna recalls his Winter of Discontent. Listen
closely and you’ll hear the cause and effect of a fragile
figure who, put quite simply, lost his shit during
Norway’s harshest season. While lyrically much more
personal/much less playful than anything prior, the
album’s shiny, happy electro-pop (complete with
Barnes’ usual bells + whistles, white funk and dance
beats) serves as the sun finally melting all that snow.
BRYAN CHENAULT
RJD2
The Third Hand 90%
XL
Artistic about-faces are hard to come
by, and—for the most part—even
harder to listen to, but God bless the exception. RJ has
ditched all the melodic soul samples, pretty much
ignoring the edifice of instrumental hip-hop to which
his previous Def Jux releases have been pillars. The
one-man result: breezy soul tracks with pop structures,
chill vocals and a grab bag of flourishes recalling everything
from McCartney to Prince. It’s not hip-hop, but
it’s got flow. SAM ROUDMAN
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Fast Food Nation OST 81%
PARK THE VAN
What’s more American than the road
trip? Well, maybe hamburgers, french
fries and milk shakes, but thanks to Fast Food Nation,
those are out. That’s where the Friends of Dean
Martinez, Spoon, Elvis Perkins and the rest of this
soundtrack’s players come in—sorta. While this collection
might be fit for a midnight drive through Malibu or
smuggling migrant workers across the border, removed
from the big screen this compilation struggles for new
context to latch onto. COLIN STUTZ
SLOAN
Never Hear the End of It 87%
YEP ROC
Like a Beatles “best of” that no one had
discovered, Sloan’s eighth LP, Never
Hear the End of It, packs a mammoth 30 tracks onto
one thrill-filled disc. This embarrassment of riches is
the disc’s greatest strength—even the tracks that come
and go in less than a minute could be cornerstones of a
decent album—but also its weakness, as the shiniest
gems lose their sheen in light of the album’s grand
scale. EWAN ANDERSON
book
South Park and 87%
Philosophy
Edited by Robert Arp
BLACKWELL
For all the yammering, blabbering
punditry flashing daily
across our screens, Trey Parker
and Matt Stone’s animated juggernaut
never fails to intellectually
obliterate them all, from the tree-huggers to
the gay-bashers to the maniacal world leaders.
Fittingly, here, several modern philosophers
charmingly pontificate on the show’s brilliant, thinly
veiled riffs on existentialism, libertarianism, “genethics”
and even the eternal “problem of evil.” By
the end, you can’t help but think South Park may,
indeed, be our last line of defense against total
oblivion. Sweet. KEN SCRUDATO
N.W.A.
The Strength of Street 78%
Knowledge: The Best of N.W.A.
CAPITOL/PRIORITY
No, N.W.A. didn’t invent gangsta rap;
they just made it impossible for white people to ignore.
While the threatened raised hell over the hell-raising
sound, the true followers—black, white or other—
knew that Ice Cube’s ferocious rhymes and the depth of
Dr. Dre’s production made the music too good to overlook.
Unfortunately, any attempt to contain the
strength of N.W.A. in a single disc caters to the terrified
rubber-neckers more than the aficionados, though the
DVD footage of the boys drinking 40s in the studio
almost justifies the purchase. MAX READ
SONDRE LERCHE
Phantom Punch 88%
ASTRALWERKS
I gotta admit: I kinda have a man crush
on Sondre Lerche. And lately, with
Phantom Punch, the Nordic wunderkind is more at
ease indulging his global pop fetishes than ever before.
Whether it’s hand-clapping robot disco, swirling Bossa
Nova surrealism or coffee shop acoustic confessions,
Lerche croons and swoons between styles like a
prophet of postmodern pomp. Subtract the droning
moper “Happy Birthday Girl,” and I’d finally have the
balls to ask him to prom. PHIL EASTMAN
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GOOD MUSIC GUIDE FILTER 12