Die, 5 Chinese Brothers, Die!

The Mong / Music Group Commentary / April 2011

Alkaline Trio – “Crimson” = 2.5 Stars
A bit dated but still pretty cool.

Motörhead – “The World Is Yours” = 3 Stars
As advertised: Motörhead delivers the goods good!

North Mississippi Allstars – “Keys to the Kingdom” = 2 Stars
Having heard quite a few great live tracks from NMA, I wanted to like this more than I actually did. But this wasn’t a matter of unmet expectations…the songs were either contrived or half-baked.

The Smiths – “Louder Than Bombs” = 3 Stars
Apparently I like The Smiths a lot more than I thought, but, to quote allmusic, this is “an overlong and unfocused collection.”

5 Chinese Brothers – “Singer Songwriter Beggarman Thief” = 0 Stars
I find 5 Chinese Brothers’ lyrical attempts to ‘speak to me’ through some stupidly imagined universal experience of Americana even more enraging than their saccharine twang. Powerfully unbearable!

G’hits – 3 Chord Rock
Great collection. I really like this “theme” idea for G’hits. Looking forward to more.

Topic:
How do you listen to the music we review each month? Do you use headphones, listen in the car while driving, listen at home while doing other things, listen with 100% of your attention...you get the idea.

All of the above but usually I listen to “music club” selections when at my computer doing creative writing or other creative work that needs to be done on the PC (meaning, not busy work, paying bills, or jobby-job work) and then while actually writing my “music club” commentary.

The follow up is, does HOW you listen, or the number of listens, affect how you rate the music?

No, how, where, or when I listen doesn’t influence how I rate it. If I suspect it’s a “4” or above, I’ll generally listen to it repeatedly for the pure pleasure of it but the side-effect is a confirmation or refinement of my initial enthusiasm.