ALBUMMER! 43: Jet's "Shine On"

Aussies love this kind of meat 'n potatoes, rock 'n roll. I was living in Australia when this album came out and even this album started to get some pushback there, which tells you how bad it is.

Also, please continue with the Bakalar ribbing, I'm all about that.

It's a good show!

On the pitchfork vs metal note, I feel like the "deafheaven are the only metal band they like" take is kind of outdated, they've actually been really good about metal reviews lately IMO. Like, they gave the new Undeath album Best New Music, and gave pretty glowing reviews to the new Author & Punisher, Blood Incantation, Boris, Full of Hell, etc etc etc. Not trying to be some radical pitchfork defender or anything, just wanna shout out the staff there that cover metal, because they're doing good.

Just thought of another thing, I remember not thinking the Pitchfork review wasn't that noteworthy but that's probably because I read a lot of the British weekly music press in the 90's and 00's. And they were fucking savage on a constant basis. I even read through some genre specials they put out and like in the 80's they were brutal to a lot of bands that definitely didn't deserve the crap thrown their way.

God, a dig at Bakalar in the first 2 minutes. 10/10 Show

The Google Glass talk just reminds me of when Dan tried on someone's Google Glass at an E3 or something and the dude left the porno on or something.

As for Jet, I don't think I knew the buzz about them was that harsh? I didn't read Pitchfork so I didn't know about them. Are they just the super picky internet music critic place or something? Jet is, at best, totally okay.

I have a friend who said "Jet got their songs from an AC/DC yard sale" and I don't know if he was being for real or just laying down an incredibly savage burn.

Jet, that's the Paul McCartney band, right?

The only music review site I frequent is angrymetalguy dot com. They seem to get promo from smaller, Bandcamp-focused labels with the occasional big name and a lot of smaller bands. It's not so much that I trust their word as gospel, as the site appears to be run by a man in a gorilla suit and a cat, but they helped me get back on board with metal maybe 10ish years ago when I was looking for a review of the newest Shining album and they were the first site that popped up. (The Norwegian Shining, with all the saxophone, not the suicidally depressed band from Sweden.) The album was just okay, but I still check the site regularly.

Also, they took a firm, avowed, public anti-Nazi stance in regard to the bands they cover, and I appreciate that. I've literally contacted Bandcamp customer service more than once to have far-right/Nazi assholes removed from my purchase library because, hey, sometimes it's hard to tell without googling every single thing about a band before you buy an album, and I don't need that shit in my life.

I actually thought the most recent Shining album (Animal) would show up on Albummer at some point when the show started. I guess Shining is a bit too far into the weeds though, particularly with the confusion with the other Shining.

@magnetphonics: i didn't even realize they had another album out since One One One. Blackjazz was so fun and unique and abrasive, all at the same time, and I love it dearly, but they clearly didn't have much else in the tank. or rather, the need to experiment outweighed the need for...well, good music. and dumping the sax is a pretty egregious offense.

International Blackjazz Society is the follow up to One One One and is pretty fun, but Animal after it is just....whooof. Glad they're having fun with it but that one whiffed with me.

I ordered a shirt so i could throw it away, but you havent shipped it to me yet. Its been like a whole day! GET IT TOGETHER!

luv u

I've listened to an entirely embarassing amount of Jet and Get Born is maybe one of the most Okay albums ever. There are songs, they are Fine, some of them have hooks you can sing, it is an album designed to be played in a grocery store

That rules, dude. Thanks for the tip. Small outlets like this are of course important as curators.

@diet_hellboy This video demonstrates the best use of Google Glass (it starts around the 2:20 mark).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAYAjj5HNRU&t=183s&ab_channel=GameInformer

I ran across this slate article while googling the Pitchfork review, and it pretty much makes the same exact points Drew was making about music curation 4 years ago, dang.

https://slate.com/culture/2018/05/when-a-negative-pitchfork-review-could-end-a-career.html

Whens the Anthony Fantano vs. 2 minutes episode of Arcade Pit happening?

I had a friend in high school who wore a hat similar to what the drummer for Jet did for a little bit and although I do not condone bullying and violence I had to restrain myself from giving him a swirly or an atomic wedgie every time I saw him.

When I listened to the first Jet album I could hear the kicks the singer was doing in the studio to try and feel like a real rockstar band, and that level of pretentious was something I couldn't stand.

I'm primarily a hip hop guy. I know where to look when I want to find new rap releases and the algorithms generally do a decent-to-OK-to-meh enough job of steering me towards what it knows I want. But I also want to be exposed to music I'd normally never listen to otherwise. It's important to me to be adventurous when it comes to my music, if only for the fact that I know I'll get bored listening to the same kind of stuff over and over again, and I know what my limitations are in knowing how to assess other kinds of music I didn't spend my adolescence obsessing over.

So music reviews play a pretty important role in my life. But I will say there are a lot of qualifiers and caveats. Mainly, and this speaks to the critic-as-artist point someone in the episode made, the thing that's going to get me to listen to something is not a rundown of an artist's technical ability or praising the mastering or anything like that. It's the ability to describe how those aspects inform how the music made them feel. That's why most of my preferred reviewers these days are on youtube and social media and random people on Rateyourmusic or whatever. Areas where individual personalities matter more than the institution they may be working for.

One of my favorite albums last year was the self-titled album by For Those I Love. It wasn't a review from a huge institution that got me to listen to it. It was a "smaller" youtube channel called Deep Cuts describing how cathartic a listen it was. It's an album about the artist's best friend who took his own life, and while such a subject sounds like a heavy listen, the guy who runs the channel describes how it uses dance music to make the experience feel genuinely nostalgic. Like you're remembering the good times. I gave it a shot and I loved it, and I never would have found it on my own.

So yeah, music reviews good. People talking about music on the internet in a healthy manner good. But Drew has some genuinely good points. When so much music is at your disposal, the option to just jump in is certainly a valid one.

EDIT: On a similar note, I checked out that album Jeremy recommended. A Crowd of Drunken Lovers by Robert Sarazin Blake, and it's great!

@unclejam23: the Albummer bump is real! Let's get my man a few more cents on streaming

From "I'm the Queen of wikifeet!" to "I have no friends." Must be hard to be emily

@jeremyhammond: Bought it on Bandcamp. Whole actual dollars went his way!

Man, i also really enjoy the Strokes and that whole Meet me in the bathroom scene that happened. It helps that most of the Nu-metal stuff didn't appeal to me back in that day apart from Linkin Park and the more palatable Limp Bizkit, so hearing big choruses & bright guitar melodies was exactly what i wanted out of guitar music at that point.

Was watching some Glastonbury vids this weekend and i'm very curious what Americans would make out of the new album from Sleaford Mods that has gained them a new level of popularity in the UK. I can see it mixing like oil & water for Americans because it sounds pretty much like you're middle aged neighbor with a thick accent complaining about the weather.

As a Scorpio, I'm into this scorpion rebrand.