POPTIMISTS REVIEW OF 08: Most Horrible Pop Thing

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

As before* this is being done canon-style - you get THREE picks plus! whether you pick the X-Factor or not in the main poll you can take part in the special sub-poll.

[Poll #1312786]

*all polls will be open until the end of the year when official results will be posted.

And remember - send yr list of 10 top tracks to leagueofpop@gmail.com before the end of the year too.

Comments

[koganbot]

If the Chinese Democracy had pulled off even a quarter of the squall and screech and dance and poignancy of Appetite For Destruction I'd have cared about it, and it does pull off the dance (whoevers were on bass did rather good Duff McKagan imitations) - think you're the only person who's ever given GN'R adequate appreciation for their danceability. I don't assume that poignant squall and screech and dance is obsolete, even if I haven't found my way to people doing it well this decade.

[koganbot]

I don't assume that poignant squall and screech and dance is obsolete

In aggregate, that is, which is why I said "is" rather than "are."

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Not suggesting it'd be impossible for GnR to pull a great album out of their butts in '08; just saying it'd be no more likely for them to make one than for any number of other random bunches of rock guys. Hell, they had a hard enough time making another great album *four* years after *Appetite* (and Axl's high register was already shot by then); 21 years would be a stretch. Also not sure I'm hearing the "dance" on the new one that Frank's talking about; there are moments, I guess. but mostly I hear them trying to get dancey in, like, a Nine Inch Nails way here and there, which comes off as rigid as you'd expect. (Maybe what they really miss, still, is Adler's drumming. But they were already missing that on the *Use Your Illusion*s). And yes, I did (and do) think that *Appetite* is one of the great dance music albums of all time. But I could easily come up with a list of several '08 hard rock (not to mention country, probably) albums I'd be more likely to dance to than to *Chinese Democracy*. So again, the assumption that people were supposed to care about this album just because the singer useta be awesome in another lifetime made no sense to me.

[koganbot]

Makes sense for the same reason I cared in anticipation of the Mary Weiss album last year: the long long layoff and the fact that I didn't know what to expect. (Whereas my indifference in advance of the Dolls and Stooges reunions was owing to Johansen and Iggy not being out of earshot in the intervening years and so having had a long time to undo my caring.) Not that I was surprised by the mediocrity of the Mary Weiss album or the Guns N' Roses album, but I did care, had hopes for a shiver of excitement.

(Actually, don't remember if I heard the full Mary Weiss album or just selections from it various places.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Oddly, several of the more bearable parts of the new GnR (parts of tracks 4, 10, 12, 14 - usually when Axl at least sings in his midrange) somehow make me think "Queensryche," who were hardly the most swinging dance band in hard rock history themselves. The one track that did hit me as rather funky -- also probably my favorite track, at least in part because Axl's singing reaches for the rafters, though I like the middle eastern-ish guitar parts, too -- is "If The World" (though its lyrics don't grab me any more than any of the other lyrics on the album have, which is to say pretty much not at all.) I guess I detect some quasi-funkiness in other places, but it tends to be so buried in ugliness that I don't care.