Uno!

So as many of you all may know, I am a hardcore Green Day fan. I have practically everything they've ever done... Ever. So as one would assume, that when I heard that the iconic Pop Punk where coming out with not only 1 but 3 new albums all in quick succession I would freak out! I did not... And here's why.

This is a gimick! It's supposed to get people talking, and it will get the record company SHITLOADS of money. Ontop of that, how can a band record 3 albums worth of good material all at once? Well to be honest, they didn't. Uno, the first installment of the 3 is pretty fucking bad! Well... No... But Yes!... Um... Let me explain.

This album contains some of the greatest material they have ever written! Nuclear Family, the fist song on the album is one hell of a way to start of an album! With fast riffs and a very upbeat and happy tone to it. Same goes for track 2, Stay the Night and well... every song on the album... It's all kinda the same... And between all the great songs that all sound the same, there is some absolute shit that all sounds the same!

The third track Carpe Diem was possibly the most disappointing song on the album in my opinion because it starts as a huge blast to the past, this could fit perfectly on Shenanigans! But then the chorus comes in, and it is so sloppy and lazy! It's like they wanted to get the writing process over and done with as quickly as they could with a half-assed chord progression that just doesn't gel well with the lyrics. I really feel that they could have put a little more effort into this song particularly, it could have been great!

Onto Track 4, Let Yourself Go this is where I start seeing a bad trend in this album. Now I want to make it clear that I love the song, but there is something wrong with the lyrics, the word fuck. There is such a thing as way too much swearing and between this song and Track 5, Kill the DJ there is way too much use of the word fuck! What are they trying to prove? That they have a poor vocabulary? Well we all know they don't, but if these were the two songs I'd heard from them first I wouldn't have been so sure. Kill The DJ goes for a very interesting disco sound and while I like the song musically, the lyrics are bad. There is very little to no use of poetic imagery and it is just crude and violent.

The next 3 songs, Fell for You, Loss of Control and Troublemaker, are the reasons I find it hard to like this album, Fell for You has some of the most cheesy lyrics I have ever heard,
"I had a dream that I kissed your lips and it felt so true
Then I woke up as a nervous wreck and I fell for you."
I know they can do better.

While Loss of Control isn't BAD, it doesn't work with the flow of the album, I think it should have been put somewhere else in the album. I actually kinda like the song itself, it has a very retro 60's/70's Power Pop sound which seems to be a theme in this album as it can be heard again most prominently in Sweet 16 and Kill the DJ.

The lyrics in Troublemaker are just awful and I feel that song along with the first single off the album, Oh Love have no place in this album. The lyrics in Troublemaker make no sense and are really just sloppy.

Sweet 16 is quite an interesting song, I read somewhere that it was influenced by The Beach Boys, which is a very obvious sound. The song reminds me a lot of their old music and yet there is something different about it. It... Sounds like Summer, much like The Beach Boys.

Finally Oh Love, now many of you should have heard this song as it was the single. I personally hate this song but I understand why it's there. Oh Love is made to be played live, with the muted guitar in the intro for the audience to clap along to and the overly long intro is used to psych up the crowd. All I can say is that I can't wait for the live version.

Now when I said in the beginning that this album is pretty fucking bad, I meant that this album is pretty fucking bad FOR A GREEN DAY ALBUM. If it was any other band I would forgive the things they did wrong. Much like Blink 182's Neighborhoods released last November. I think the band should've put more into the writing process and should have taken all the crap out of the albums, (As I assume there will be more crap to come) and made a 2 CD album with all the good stuff.

But for now all we can do is sit and wait for Dos and Tre.

Thanks so much for reading and until next time, Turn up the Volume and Plug in Your Head

Xtian Zzyzx

A Return to the Blogosphere

Hey all, I'm back and yes this time it's for real. I have taken an 8 month hiatus from Plug in Your Head and for that I am desperately sorry, but my personal life took a dive and then I sort of just forgot about Plug in Your Head in general. But I am here to make amends.

I'd like to talk rather about MY music life and what's going on in it for a little while, but I can't say for sure how often I will be doing Plug in Your Head at the moment, but there is a new very exciting project I will be working on soon that I will let you all in on as soon as it all gets finalized.

So many of my friends at college are writing exams, which means that a lot of the time I am alone now, but that's alright because the weather here in the Southern Hemisphere is is finally turning right. After the first snow seen in the greater Johannesburg area in the last 20 years blanketed the CBD last month, it is finally warming up! So with this new found spare time and warm weather, I have found myself sitting in the sun and listening to music fairly often. This happened today for instance when I put my head phones on, (Plugged in my Head if you will) closed my eyes and got lost in Bob Dylan's, Highway 61 Revisited. 

This truly is a masterpiece of music. Dylan sure as hell can write fantastic lyrics! This is one of the very rare albums that make me completely devote my attention to the lyrics all the way through. Yes the lyrics aren't sung particularly well, as Dylan's voice sounds like something in a lot of pain, but if Desolation Row doesn't make your top 20 best songs of all time, I don't know what will.

For those fans of more recent rock, My Chemical Romance released their cover of Desolation Row in 2009 for the soundtrack of The Watchmen. This movie is fantastic by the way and is very true to the Comic Book. This song is much shorter and VERY different to the original, but it's still pretty good.

But I digress. As my eyes were closed for well on 30 minutes I didn't realise what was going on around me, so when I finally did open my eyes after the 11:22 Minute EPIC that is Desolation Row, I found that I had been joined by a large group of my friends who were seated next to me and all in deep conversation!

So the sun, Bob Dylan and Neil Young's After the Goldrush (Which I failed to mention) made for a pretty good early afternoon!

I'd definitely  recommend both of these albums, they are classics for a reason. Links to some of the music mentioned are at the bottom.

This has been another Plug In Your Head, after way too long.

So until next time, turn up the volume and Plug in Your Head!

Xtian Zzyzx

tl;dr- Bob Dylan, Neil Young, My Chemical Romance and The Weather. And I'm back!