New Music Monday: September 19, 2016

I’ve seen so many films recently, it’s a real pleasure to sit down and find some music to make fun of instead. Music, my first love (to make fun of).

Against Me! – Shape Shift With Me
This is actually about as palatable and catchy as I can imagine modern power-pop-punk getting. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, this band seems content to just climb into the wheel and boogie on down a hill, like those kids in the “1979” video. This is fine. Oh boy, it’s been a while since I’ve watched this video. Wheeeeee.

Usher – Hard II Love
It sorta blows my mind that heavy auto-tune is still being used so extensively in modern pop music. It’s been going on for a while now. I would have thought that it would have gone out of vogue by now. Like guitar solos with flange effects on them or like doing duets with Sean Paul. I’ve always thought that Usher has a pretty strong voice and is fairly charming. This seems like an adequate R&B/pop song. More like “Hard II have strong feelings one way or the other”, though.

Willie Nelson – For The Good Times: A Tribute to Ray Price
This fucking rules. Willie Nelson rules. This arrangement and recording are great. His voice has a bit of a tremble, but this guy is fucking 80 years old. Give him a break. If you’d been doing this for as long a while as he’s been doing it, you’d have a bit of a tremble too. Also, probably he was high.

Brujeria – Pocho Azatlan
I don’t expect that many of you will be on board to get down with a Mexican grindcore band… but I am! I’ve been getting increasingly into grindcore for a while now, and this isn’t amazing, but it’s pretty fun. The Spanish language vocals sound especially evil for some reason.

Aaron Lewis – Sinner
…It… it’s been a while.

So the lead singer from silly post-grunge mope rock band Staind is a country singer now. Singing about how he doesn’t fit in with modern country artists because he’s actually way more country than them. Lewis’ voice is just as nasally as you remember. There’s some pretty brilliant guitar work in the opening of this track from whatever studio musicians he’s hired.

It’s kinda funny that now that hitching his wagon to the white guys that made grunge in the 90s isn’t profitable, he’s hitching his wagon to the white guys that made country music in the 50s and 60s.

Don’t worry. He’s still talking about how dark he is and how bad things are for him. Same guy.