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Randy

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The center already hasn't held.

When Sleater-Kinney announced a new album this year, I felt pretty excited.  After some reviews came in and made it sound potentially polarizing, I waited until seeing them live to pick up The Center Won't Hold.  They played basically the whole album at the show, and, at least live, it was fairly good, but clearly not on the same level as their prior releases.  Having listened to the album itself now a couple of times, all I can say is, wow, what a disappointment.

Is this what a musical mid-life crisis sounds like?  I'm not really sure what could have been done to avoid this, but there are any number of things wrong with the album.  First, and perhaps most egregious, Janet Weiss' drumming, typically the stuff of legend, sounds practically neutered, which is a shitty, shitty choice to make (and likely had something to do with her quitting the band).  Additionally, Corin Tucker never gets much of a chance to really belt out any songs here; she has fewer tracks overall than Carrie Brownstein, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, except that it means the band effectively sidelined their two strongest weapons, Corin's voice being the other one.  It's hard to say if this is a product of Tucker being in a couple of other bands that drew away her attention, and maybe some of her better songs, or if they were all complicit in this decision.  I recall Wesley Morris from Grantland leveling a criticism at The Woods that the album was a misstep because "ten other bands could do the same thing".  I disagree with that assessment, largely because Weiss and Tucker never sounded bigger than they did on that album.  This album seems to be an indicator of what would happen if those two aren't equal contributors, and the producer *is* actually interested in making them sound like everyone else.  It'd be easy to lay all the blame on St. Vincent/Annie Clark, but she has other problems to answer for.

Namely, the track arrangement and overall feel of the album is just an utter mess.  There's one stretch towards the middle - "Can I Go On", "Restless", "Ruins" - that features 3 pretty good songs, if each one is heard in a vacuum.  But, "Can I Go On" summons the bubblegummy days of "Little Babies" or "Oh!"; while "Restless" sounds like it belonged on the prior (outstanding) album, No Cities to Love; and "Ruins" drags itself through the same sludge that encapsulates this album's opening track.  And yet, here these three songs are, one right after the other, as jarring as they could possibly be.  Sleater-Kinney's stuff has often been something of an icepick to the eardrum, intentionally aggressive and challenging and uncompromising, but it's the kind you love and ask for more of, not one that makes you think they'd never walked into a recording studio before, or that they asked one of Tucker's kids to determine the track order (actually, I bet her kids could have done a better job). 

Or, maybe the biggest thing St. Vincent did wrong was to try to coat these songs with some veneer of new-wavey dance pop, like they were still worth the time to listen to them.  They're not.  The title track starts out great and unwinds into a John Mayer-like repetition that numbs you into not giving a shit; "Love" needs to time-travel and find the 80s John Hughes movie soundtrack it belongs to; and "Bad Dance" is just a waste of time.  The biggest issue, when it comes right down to it is that this is the weakest batch of songs they've ever released, and it's not even that close.  Even their debut album from 20+ years ago, borderline-unlistenable as it is, featured a couple of people who knew they had something to say and just didn't know how to say it yet.  A good producer would have heard these songs and told them, "What the fuck is this?  You're a better band; go back, cut the dead weight, keep 5 of these, and do it again."

But, I suppose even they saw this coming: the chorus of "Hey Darling" said so.  The only thing that comes from fame is mediocrity.

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On 10/31/2019 at 12:17 PM, Curt McGirt said:

I haven't listened to American Psycho since I first bought it and heard it. It was an immediate turn-off and I never bothered with Graves era after that. 

To each their own; I'm sure there are a ton of Misfits fans that can't stomach Samhain. 

That album is total butt except the song "Walk Among Us" which I found on Napster as a kid randomly. Otherwise I'm staunchly anti-Graves as well.

 

How do you guys feel about the new Ozzy? Apparently the band is Post Malone's producer/guitarist Andrew Watt, Chad Smith from RHCP on drums, and Duff from GNR on bass. It's an absolutely insane waste to me that Zakk Wylde isn't on this but obviously I'm biased.

 

https://youtu.be/fMAAMfHgO4Q

 

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On 10/31/2019 at 5:25 AM, Casey said:

You don’t like the Graves era? It’s more melodic, sure, but Saturday Night is one of my favorite songs. ??‍♂️

The two Graves albums were real good and way better than any post Misfits Danzig stuff. I think the reason people hate them is the same reason some people hate Hagar Van Halen: They won't accept the band without Danzig/DLR under any circumstance. I'll admit that I enjoy melodic stuff a lot.

I am actually seeing them in Philly as part of their "OK, Let's Drop All These Lawsuits And Do A Bunch Of Arena Shows For Stupid Money" Tour in December. Face was $50 and box office fees (not online, actual WFC box office) bumped it up to $66 (it's a good thing all the ticket companies handed out all that money to politicians so they can violate every consumer protection law on the books).

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I saw Danzig & Jerry Only do Misfits songs as a part of the Danzig Legacy thing a few years ago. All I'll say is that the most notable thing was Danzig trying to fight a photographer and leaving the stage to pursue this fight. It was at a festival, and I was on the guardrail to the left of the stage, and I could see pretty much all of it. It was a decent show, I guess. At least I can say I've seen Danzig do Misfits songs with Jerry Only live, kinda like I can say I've seen Paul McCartney live. Just stuff I never thought I'd get to see in person.

Obviously McCartney was worlds better, but that's not the point.

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9 minutes ago, Casey said:

I saw Danzig & Jerry Only do Misfits songs as a part of the Danzig Legacy thing a few years ago. All I'll say is that the most notable thing was Danzig trying to fight a photographer and leaving the stage to pursue this fight. It was at a festival, and I was on the guardrail to the left of the stage, and I could see pretty much all of it. It was a decent show, I guess. At least I can say I've seen Danzig do Misfits songs with Jerry Only live, kinda like I can say I've seen Paul McCartney live. Just stuff I never thought I'd get to see in person.

Obviously McCartney was worlds better, but that's not the point.

It's pretty well known that Danzig is an Axl Rose level asshole. I remember one of my friends at MetroStars games in the early 2000's familiar with the Jersey punk scene who opined on Danzig "He's a loser who's lucky he isn't still living in his mom's basement in Lodi."

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$66 sounds ridiculously low, I'd heard Misfits tickets were going up to $150 or higher. I think a buddy of mine in Des Moines got reamed on his. 

It baffles me that Danzig is so allergic to having fun, especially Re: photographers. He's got a license to print money and complete creative freedom for anything he does. Apparently he was actually smiling and enjoying himself at the "last ever" show while Jerry was destroying then passing out guitars and even gave one away to a fan in a wheelchair who got crowd-surfed to the front. 

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On 11/10/2019 at 8:40 PM, Casey said:

Obviously McCartney was worlds better, but that's not the point.

You and I witnessed the same McCartney show. Still the best show I've seen live.   I did not see Danzig the year before (can't remember where I was outside of hearing that Danzig had an altercation with a fan).

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McCartney was really fucking good, but I'll be honest and say, for me, it's a tie between Nine Inch Nails on Halloween 2008 or She & Him at the Ryman Auditorium in 2010 as the best shows I've ever seen live.

If we're talking shows I saw at Bonnaroo... yeah, McCartney probably wins. Although the one-two punch of My Morning Jacket leading into the headlining set from Arcade Fire in 2011 was just face-meltingly awesome. But I was also, uh.... taking a trip, so that probably enhanced those two shows quite a bit.

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17 hours ago, Casey said:

McCartney was really fucking good, but I'll be honest and say, for me, it's a tie between Nine Inch Nails on Halloween 2008 or She & Him at the Ryman Auditorium in 2010 as the best shows I've ever seen live.

If we're talking shows I saw at Bonnaroo... yeah, McCartney probably wins. Although the one-two punch of My Morning Jacket leading into the headlining set from Arcade Fire in 2011 was just face-meltingly awesome. But I was also, uh.... taking a trip, so that probably enhanced those two shows quite a bit.

MMJ is on my to see live list still. I'm ironically hoping to finally get JRAD off of my list in 2020. I saw Arcade Fire in Atlanta the week that Suburbs came out. That was an incredible set, and "Wake Up" is as cathartic live as you would imagine it could be.

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Like @Chaos mentioned, Wake Up live is very cathartic. But hearing The Suburbs (and especially Ready to Start) live was something else, too. 

1 hour ago, MORELOCK said:

Can confirm that MMJ live is mind blowing even without enhancements - or at least they were in 2005. I imagine the performances have only gotten crazier as Jim James has.

Highly Suspicious was the one thing from their set that I remember vividly. Preservation Jazz Hall Band did the song with them, and it was amazing.

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1 hour ago, MORELOCK said:

Can confirm that MMJ live is mind blowing even without enhancements - or at least they were in 2005. I imagine the performances have only gotten crazier as Jim James has.

I've watched some live streams and listened to some live taps and sbds of them. They definitely bring a certain energy to their shows now that seem to be incredible in person. Although, I'm excited to do some of the Umphrey's McGee run in February. Can't decide if I'm going to try and see them in Memphis on my B-Day and then pray to get a Caverns ticket from CashorTrade or somewhere, or just do two nights in Asheville, get my beer fix and get a Billy Strings opener for two nights.

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