Could be worse, it could be another Amy Winehouse photo

REM – I am an unabashed REM fan, and even I was ready to bury these guys after their last 3 incredibly dull releases. What a pleasant surprise to hear the band found their collective testicles. The first 3 songs right out of the box are stronger than anything they’ve recorded in ten years. Everything I love about REM is here: Peter Buck plugged in playing that jangly electric, Mike Mills singing rock’s greatest backup vocals, and Stipe doing his oblique, vaguely political, Stipey thing. It doesn’t stand up to “Out of Time” or even “Monster”, but they sound like a band playing to their strengths and giving a crap again for the first time in a long while. 4 stars

The Kills – The whole is less than the sum of the parts. Guitar work is good, vocals are good, songs are ok, but there is something missing here, and I believe that something is a drummer. Criminy, even Meg White’s primal 4-4 stomp would be an improvement on the synthesized drum loops that drag this disc down like a pair of cement shoes. A couple of tracks came dangerously close to sounding like Missing Persons outtakes. 2 stars

Enon – Seriously schizophrenic. There are a couple of good songs on this one, notably “Window Display”; and the better tracks (like “Sold!” and “Pleasure and Privelige”) remind me of The Thrills. Unfortunately, there’s a fair amount of crap on here as well. Over-synthesized, and just a little too cute at times. The songs with the female on lead vocal sound like No Doubt or Garbage, neither of which is a compliment. 2 1/2 stars

Jimmy Eats World – Pleasant enough, if slightly generic. Band has good chops, playing throughout the disc is strong. “Middle” is an absolute killer, but a lot of the songs are indistinguishable from the one that came before it. Worked a lot better in a shuffle with a few other discs than listening to the whole thing at once.


Discussion Question

#1) The social networking sites are changing the music industry, and there is a pro/con to this. The pro being that I can go to these sites, find out about the band, purchase product, find upcoming shows, etc. The con is, this is what radio used to do, and now it falls on me to do the leg-work to find new bands. Where I used to discover new music on the radio, I now have to scour music magazine samplers, pay for satellite radio and surf the net. Is it helping the demise of the music industry? I think its more accurate to say it is part of changing the model that has existed for eons.

#2) I think the music industry in 5-10 years is going to be heavily splintered. There will still be an “industry” model like we are used to, but it will be limited to bands who are big enough to move a couple thousand copies of “product” when they release something. Basically, the stuff most of us in this group run away from will still be part of that industry machine. Its easy to forget, but people who take music as seriously as we do comprise a very minute percentage of the music buying public.

The other part of the business will be smaller labels and individual artists relying heavily on direct marketing (touring, web-sites, e-mail, etc) to specific target audiences. The more fan-friendly and web-savvy the band, the better results they will have.

Wilco (sorry, Ken) is a perfect example of the successful model. They tour like fiends, and their (free) web-site is phenomenal. New albums are streamed weeks before the official release, tickets are offered to fans (without the ticketbastard charges) before the public, and a different live show is available on the site on almost a weekly basis. They even have a spot where you can request songs for upcoming shows. In doing this, a band that gets absolutely no radio play in this market is playing three sold-out shows at a 2500 seat theatre this week. That doesn’t happen without top-notch direct marketing.