Poor Aim: Love Songs

admin — Sat, 12 May 2007 12:46:00 +0000

I got agitated with the first song on this album. Might be the mood I am in – I just didn't feel like hearing the lyrics, "I waited for days. I can't believe you didn't call me." This song is called "Hey Boy." I had heard of this music before, and I am a fan of K Records, but I wasn't into this. There are a lot of remixes here of songs that didn't interest me much in the first place. Insipid lyrics and electronic blips are the bulk of this. I did enjoy the song "Hock It," maybe because it had what I considered to be a healthy dose of bitterness and aggression. Could be that this just tells you where I'm at. There is one remix that has stringed instruments that I enjoyed also. The song asking where all her friends are is just tiresome.

Written by: Katy Otto, May 12th 2007

Paper Television

admin — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 05:03:00 +0000

By The Blow

K Records

You might hear the term “pop” thrown around in reference to The Blow’s latest album Paper Television, but don’t be fooled into thinking this is anything like conventional mainstream pop music. Think about it, when’s the last time you heard Lionel Richie’s “Dancing On The Ceiling” compared to post-punk, or Wang Chung’s “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” deemed anything like electro-clash? Somewhere along the line indie kids got the idea that it was cool to call their music “pop” simply because the lyrics were cheesy. Truth be told, The Blow’s Paper Television is an indie album made up of cutsie female vocals laid over some laptop bleeps and synthesizer effects. The lyrical content lingers around relationship issues and doesn’t really expand much beyond—that part of it fits into the pop paradigm, but the pipsqueak vocals and glitchy, DIY, electronica instrumentation and jagged melodies are anything but “poppy.” If you own two or more albums from the Kill Rock Stars catalog you might like this, but if you’re looking for "real" pop music, you’d be better off digging out those old NSYNC CDs.

Written by: Patricia Valery, January 8th 2007