The Trey Irby Review Archive

For all the emo guffawing and “teen angst” poured into Linkin Park’s rhymes, one thing is not hard to dispute: the shit sells. Even when their entire genre is collapsed and the Fred Dursts and Josey Scotts around them are noticing that people have stopped caring, LP still fucking sells. However, with Minutes to Midnight, they manage to do something that people who listened to “Numb” and “Breaking the Habit” on repeat never expected. They grew up.

The band proves itself much more crisp with this release, and despite cutting the most “hard” song on the album, “QWERTY”, from the final track listing, in this case it is actually good. The songs hold themselves together thematically, and while there are definitely weak songs (preferrably the Justin Timberlake-like “Leave Out All the Rest” and the moodier second part of the CD), it’s hard not to find the band that much better than they were last time out. Instead of embarking on a generic riff like the ones they began their careers with, they opt for a more focused approach to the music. And finally after three albums of whiny sounding vocals, Chester finally grows into his vocal style in a way that really goes along with the music. And even if other vocalist Mike Shinoda is reduced to two tracks where he appears, he brings his A-game to those tracks (“Bleed It Out” and “Hands Held High”) and creates two of his finest efforts.

Minutes to Midnight may be the type of album that disappoints hardcore LP buffs who want another variation of “One Step Closer”, and the album definitely has its dull moments as well as managing to sound extremely long despite around a 45 minute run time. That said, Minutes is also the best thing the band has recorded, and a fantastic experience.

Must Haves: “What I’ve Done”, “Shadow of the Day”, “Hands Held High”, “The Little Things Give You Away”

Sex and r&b have gone together for ages. After all, what would the genre or music in general be without songs like Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” or Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough on Your Love”? Of course, this is the modern age now, sex is becoming less of “the taboo” and more of “the norm” in mainstream music, and the boys of Pretty Ricky make it a point to talk about it a lot in their second full-length disc, Late Night Special.

However, it’s hard not to see the laziness in songs like “So Confused”, which bemoans a cheating romance with the all too obvious line “I’m in love with a girl but/She got a man at home/I’m so confused/I don’t know what to do”. Worse than lazy song lyrics is the lack of rapping talent the boys really have. They do have a Boyz 2 Men-like vibe with their singing voices, but the rapping ruins it severely. Not to mention, their influences of R. Kelly and Jodeci weren’t exactly the most talented sex rhymists themselves. Moreover, every song relates to sex, and while PR isn’t expecting people to eventually get repulsed by the concept, they do. It’s much like softcore porn. At first, there’s the hilarity of sleazy lines to hold your interest and then after a while, it gets boring and you realize it really sucks and you wasted your time. Maybe they should’ve been more tongue-in-cheek…then, at least I could’ve called them the Misty Mundaes of music.

Must Haves: Nothing…again.

So…Gwen. What have you done? For all the things she could be commonly criticized with (turning No Doubt from a tight post-grunge rock band to a full-on pop outfit, all but destroying the band Bush by letting Gavin Rossdale screw her nightly, making everyone near entirely forget No Doubt ever existed with the poppy nature of the solo stuff, etc.), her debut solo record was amazing. It was better than No Doubt’s millenium era CDs, and managed to sell a billion copies without sucking. That and Stefani experimented a lot with the songs, bouncing from one end of the spectrum to the other, leading the audience into a world where synth-pop, hip-hop, and balladeering all fit into a trippy ride.

Of course, all good experimenters have their failures. And for the most part, The Sweet Escape is the parts of Stefani’s mish-mash experimentation that outright fail. Starting with the bizarrely misplaced yodeling in lead single and lead track “Wind It Up”, it has the sense of an idea that could be brilliant, but instead turns out to be insane and ridiculous. Current single “The Sweet Escape”, does show off one of the more pleasing numbers in this mixed bag, plus, it contains Akon in a non-annoying falsetto, which may be the biggest miracle of all. Also, tracks like the indie style “Early Winter” and the Robin Thicke-like “U Started It” are successes in that they capture Stefani matching vocal sex appeal with solid production.

However, half of the album attempts to channel Stefani’s two biggest single successes from L.A.M.B. (“Cool” and “Hollaback Girl”). Songs like “4 in the Morning”, “Orange County Girl”, “Now That You Get It”, and “Yummy” don’t work simply because they are not “Cool” nor “Hollaback Girl”. Stefani’s latent attempts to act urban fail miserably, and since the urban numbers take up a good deal of the album, it just doesn’t work. To Stefani’s credit, she does deserve admiration for not going entirely the same route as the last release, but this is more a backstep than anything else.

Must Haves: “Early Winter”, “U Started It”, “The Sweet Escape”

John Mayer is one of those guys that you love to hate. He sings nice songs, ones that are overly positive, and ones where he seethes out emotion, and in the process gets celeb hotties to notice (even that crazy ho Jessica Simpson noticed). He has the personality of an asshole, but at the same time, the humor of a guy who doesn’t gets too serious about his fame. And despite this jealousy (I am quite jealous myself), it’s hard not to face the fact that he is very talented. He can strum a guitar with the best of them and his lyrics have gradually gotten better and better. And Continuum is definitely continued evidence of it.

While yes, this is still the guy that wrote poppy hits like “No Such Thing” and “Your Body is a Wonderland”, the record shows a Mayer that is a smarter songwriter, not one for the cliche, and yet with tracks like “Waiting on the World to Change”, he manages to put good songwriting and the pop hook together to make great songs. Other tracks like “In Repair” or his Hendrix cover of “Bold As Love” show his guitar skills that were held back on the other two albums.

The only real flaw in Continuum is that while the album is great background music, the record doesn’t strike one as a great record. There’s a collection of good songs, but none of them really cross the bank as brilliant. And that’s alright for Mayer, no doubt. His goal was to make a good CD, and he did so. Now he can go back to screwing Jessica Simpson or interviewing Lil’ Jon again or something with the three years off.

Must Haves: “In Repair”, “Dreaming of a Broken Heart”, “Waiting on the World to Change”, “Bold As Love”

In March of 2006, on his double disc album Straight to Hell, Hank Williams III briefly mentions his own hatred of what he refers to as “pop country”. And while admittedly, Hank III’s CD tended to lose its luster after about a billion listens, his point on pop country was dead-on, though, it’s almost sadly prophetic that a mere week later, Rascal Flatts’s latest album would go on to sell 700,000 copies in the US. Oh, how cruel mainstream America really is.

Needless to say, this review will hardly be of the positive kind. Mainly because this is an album with nothing redeeming in it. Album opener “Stand” tries and fails at smooth balladeering as well as “What Hurts The Most” and the fourth track “I Feel Bad” wins the unintentionally bad song title sweepstakes. The lyrics are trite, especially “Backwards”, which appears to mark every country cliche (trucks, dogs, etc.) in its own ridiculousness. There’s too many times when it sounds like a silly Hallmark card and not something genuine. It reeks of the type of record a wild man would put on for his girlfriend, and hardly listen to. Hell, lead vocalist Gary LeVox just sounds like crap in general. That’s enough, I’m sure you get the idea. If anything, this is a pure insult to country music in general. Legends like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Sr., George Jones, and many others wrote out stories and songs that actually expressed things they felt, and didn’t fall to the mainstream ideal. LeVox seems hard-pressed to make his band #1 on the sales charts, though, and that may be the only thing Me and My Gang actually succeeds in doing.

Must Haves: Not a damn thing.

You know, I went into this review thinking that Black Eyed Pea-er Fergie’s debut solo effort The Dutchess may be the worst record I have to review. And you know what else? I listened to the record…and I like it. Obviously you kids all know the story of Fergie. The girl goes from obscurity to being the hot chick from BEP. Along the way, she’s had scandals (the peeing on stage), movie roles (a movie in Wolfgang Petersen’s mega sea flop Poseidon), and created shit in musical form (“the viral “My Humps”).

So now zoom to the solo record. Also, wipe your brain clean of singles like “Fergalicious”, “London Bridge”, and “Glamorous”. After the repetitive “Fergalicious” opens the album, we go on to “Clumsy”, which is a track with a weirdly infectious beat and Fergie playing around with her sex appeal. And that is one positive of the CD right off the bat. While yes, she is whoring her sex appeal, she also has this knowing attitude about it. And yes, the songs are hardly deep fare lyrically, but the beat and production are solid. Fergie’s style is diverse, going from breathy vocals to rapping. Needless to say, she sounds a lot better when she doesn’t rap. In fact, that emphasis of rapping in the latter portions nearly ruins the second part of the album, which barring the Amy Winehouse-like “Maybe We Can Take A Ride” is mostly crap.

That said, going into this with low expectations, I gotta say it impressed me in the way Robin Thicke’s album did, which is to say it way marginal but way better than expected. It doesn’t suck, and I suddenly feel that Fergie should stay solo and never go back to those damn Peas again.

Must Haves: “Voodoo Doll”, “Pedestal”, “Maybe We Could Take A Ride”, “Clumsy”, “All That I’ve Got”