Big Orange Crayonmusical thingsMasters of the Hemisphere (self-titled) Kindercore Records The cover art on this album kinda represents what's inside: its a picture of a kid in a bright yellow raincoat walking through a rain storm with dry air behind her. The music sometimes has a meloncholy feel to it, with some songs about isolation and sadness and so on, but it shines through it all like the dayglo raincoat and makes everything feel alright. In other words, I really like this album. It has kinda Beach Boys-like vocals, but in a good way, a nice, clean, melodic kind of way, not the old ghosts falling apart on stage in front of baby boomers who don't listen to anything other than "golden oldies" and "continuous soft rock" stations kinda way. The album also features an a perfect pop song called "Everybody Knows Canada". It sounds super-happy, has a xylophone sounding thingie and has lyrics that make very little sense but are fun to sing along to ("Everybody knows that Arlington has better looking girls than Farmington, but everybody knows that Farmington has better looking streets than Canada" and "Everybody knows that Canada is the only thing wrong with this town" and so on). "Billy Mitchell" also is cool, so are "Meteor", "West Essex" and "She Plays Guitar". All of the songs are good, actually. The only problem that I have is that the violin on the last track is a little grating. In spite of that, this is one of those albums that make you want to wait around and listen all the way through, even if you have something else that you need to do. Total score: 411 out of 411 |