105. Battles - Mirrored (2007)

I've yet to wander much into the somewhat frightening (and terribly-named) world that is "math-rock"; it seems to be more about technical prowess than emotion and I don't like that kind of stuff. Battles vary the palette with adding weird, processed vocals and when it's all put together this stuff sounds like battle (aha!) music for some kind of possessed chipmunk army. One thing to be said: the musicianship on this record is almost wholly perfect and the production is fantastic. "Race:In" performs the neat trick of making it sound like the performers are going at it right in your own room, and "Bad Trails" is repetitive but produces a frightening little atmosphere (and was memorably used in the underrated film Big Fan). The problem with albums that carve out a distinct sonic atmosphere for themselves (and this one certainly does) is that if the resulting album is not sufficiently emotionally convincing it can sound like novelty music, a one-off. Two other famous "singular-sounding" albums--My Bloody Valentine's Loveless and Slint's Spiderland--moved beyond their oddness through transcendence in the first case and power and terror in the second, and this album really has neither of those. It's a nifty little curio, and since this band seems to be all but broken up right now, never to release a followup, that's probably what it will remain.

MY RATING: 7.4

Battles - "Atlas"

127. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods (2005)

This motherfucker is loud. The mix is so distorted and in-the-red that it rivals, and possibly surpasses, Iggy Pop's infamous remix of Raw Power (which I prefer to the original, btw) as the loudest single piece of music I've ever heard. For this record Sleater-Kinney largely dropped any semblance of "punk", instead settling for gigantic, terrifying exercises of guitar that almost approach Jimi Hendrix in their ferocity. Opening track "The Fox" barely seems to hold together outside of its unbelievable volume, but that's what makes it thrilling--you're basically too busy scraping your brain off the back wall from the power of that colossal opening chord to even think about whether it's a "good song" or not. And that's a good thing, because the songwriting here is, in general, far weaker than their preceding record. There are no bad tracks, but the songs are a lot more pedestrian than I was used to hearing from Sleater-Kinney--most of these tracks are basically generic riff-fests that could have been written by pretty much anyone. "Jumpers", in addition to sharing a title with a Third Eye Blind track, is about as generic. But I'm willing to throw a lot of that aside out of sheer respect for the sound on this record--while I assume audiophiles will tear their hair out upon hearing it (some tracks are so loud they devolve into static) I love it because when turned up high enough, it sounds like a goddamned jet engine. If there's no place in this world for insanely loud music, you can count me out.

MY RATING: 8.4

Sleater-Kinney - "The Fox"

134. Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf (2002)

This record is completely unapologetic about its 70s influence--it's basically like listening to a classic rock station for an hour (and the little "radio" interludes, as irritating as they can get, only confirm this). I used to not like this one too much, thinking the production was too in-the-red and the whole thing was too singleminded to really enjoy, but time has improved it a little bit. Not a lot, but a little. First of all, there's not a lot of variety here at all--the opening track kicks your ass a little more than the rest do, and "Mosquito Song" brings in one of the Ween Brothers to vary the palette, but this is hard-drivin' 70s rock all the way, with massive, prehistoric guitar riffs and highpitched vocals and organ. Critics fell all over it because it certainly was rare to see hard rock played with such skill and as creatively as possible (note: sounding like 70s rock is not the same as ripping off 70s rock--compare these guys to Eagles of Death Metal to see the difference. These guys use their sound in an intelligent way, and take into account the fact that years have passed between the 70s and now). But the album is long, and monolithic, and there's a depressing stretch near the end of it that seems to be the exact same song over and over again for about four tracks, as well as the fact that "Song for the Dead" is just six minutes of ugly riffs. Aside from those problems, this is probably this decade's seminal "hard rock" (not metal or punk) record, so grab 'er if you like this kind of stuff. I personally think that if you can't beat Led Zeppelin, don't even try, but that's just me...

MY RATING: 6.5


Queens of the Stone Age - "God Is In the Radio"