2009 - the year of dissapointing follow ups

The year hasn't even finished, yet I'm already declaring it a write off... actually, no, it was a very good year for music, it's just a lot of the stuff I was looking forward to didn't come out exactly as I'd hoped. For starters, Yeah Yeah Yeah's - It's Blitz. The punk rock, garage pop band decides to put out a completely trend following pile of electro indie dance balls. The absolutely unstoppable and unpredictable guitar and drum work of Nick Zinner and Brian Chase take a back seat to synths and drum machines. I felt utterly betrayed. 10 tracks of heartbreaking dick cheese coated shit all topped off by Karen O's poor attempt at pop singing. I looked up to these guys and now I look down on them in SHAME.

Next is ARCTIC MONKEYS new album HUMBUG. What an awesome concept. The best of modern British rock teaming up with the cultural rock icon of the last 10 years Josh Homme. I was shitting myself with anticipation for an epic hard rock monster that would cement the arctic monkeys place in music history. What did I get? Watered down piss. There was the desert-esque feel of Josh Homme in there, but it just lacked passion. All the slower moments of the arctic monkeys put together in one place. Overall it's not terrible, in fact it's not even bad. But it's not good, great, amazing or even going to be remembered in 2 years time.

Finally we have the band that 6 months ago I said were the best band in the world. MUSE.
My heart sank as track after track revealed The Resistance to be more like a pop muse rip off band using hackneyed cliches about conformity and the government while filling in the rest with soppy ballads stolen from Celine Dion's B-sides collection. The Resistance is like being tortured by your best friend. My assumption about this (and a few of my friends think so too) is they're just too happy. How can you write anthemic anti-authoritarian rock when you've sold out wembly twice and are freaking millionaires with model wives? You can't! Not only that, but the production is a let down too. There are moments when some of the riffs seem like they're about to break out into a mountain of fretboard fire, but instead a wussy let down comes out sounding soft, rounded and weak. This might sell better than any of their previous ones, but it's Showbiz and Origin of Symmetry that'll go down in history as truly ground breaking.

Their have been some great albums this year though, I'm not all negative nancy pants. Future of the Left's album Travels with Myself and Another is totally brilliant. The Mars Volta's Octahedron is more restrained than usual but still a work of progressive genius. Kasabian's album West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Assylum was not what I was expecting but is carved from great songs and hence is a success. Sonic Youth's new album totally caught me by surprise, and THE VIGNETTES EP VIOLENCE SOLVES EVERYTHING is out in NOVEMBER and you should definitely buy it.
The year's not over yet though. Wolfmother's new album Cosmic Egg will be out soon, and I guarantee Andrew Stockdale doesn't have the ability to follow up their awesome self titled debut.
Jet's new album just came out and surprise surprise it's about as rock and roll as Matchbox 20, and an AWESOME new band called THEM CROOKED VULTURES are coming out with something soon. If you haven't heard of them, look it up. It's ridiculously cool.

There's actually a dick load more music I'd like to talk about here, but I'll put it in another blog.
Until then, go fuck yourselves.

The Vignettes

fact

You can lose up to 2kg just by taking a shit and a piss. Think about that next time you see one of those 'lose weight quickly' schemes.

Their are fecal particles on your toothbrush, no matter where it is in your house.

An average person will consume 12 pubic hairs in their fast food annually.

Awesome.

i-annoyed

How annoying is that chick from those iSelect adds? I just want to punch her in the face! Stop spouting those stupid expressions dammit! Also, what's with putting the letter 'i' in front of the name of products. People aren't going to buy insurance because it reminds them of and ipod.

Woo

It's totally finished! Yay. Just got back from mastering with Will Bowden. We talked about how his cat has cat-herpes... in it's eye. Weird, but we had a great time.
While we were there we were thinking of putting subversive messages in the cd like "worship Stan" or "You're uncle touches you at night", or subtle things like the sound bytes from intense anal porn. Instead we put some cool delay sounds from a sub woofer.
Now we're going to bris for my bro's birthday for a week to unwind AND to shoot a film clip for 'Hey Little Girl' with my long time buddy and film savant friend Joe. It's gonna be a sweet piece of special effects meat!
When we get back we'll be updating this shiz a whole lot more so stay tuned for unnecessarily long and pointless rants about the price of milk, etc.

Joel

Violence Solves Everything

What a fucking effort. We've only been working on this EP for a couple of days but it feels like months. It's all gonna be worth it when we get the finished masters back on the 21st though. It's sounding like some kind of epic, glam-punk rock and roll beast and it's all thanks to the absolute champions at 'The Brain' studios.
As you may have guessed, we're naming this EP 'Violence Solves Everything', which is taken from a lyric by one of our favourite bands 'Future of the Left'.
It's only going to be 4 tracks now - 'Bring Me Down, Hey Little Girl, You Don't Know, End of the World' as 1 track got scrapped due to time and money restrictions.
It's going to be amazing though. The miscarriage of society that is this 'The Vignettes' is about to go out and fuck the shit out of every poser, try hard band in Aus. Come to a show and watch the violence ensue.

p.s. photos of the recording process are up on katie's flickr
p.p.s. lady gaga has a penis, TAKE THAT!