Big Orange Crayonmusical thingsVarious Artists At Home With the Groovebox Grand Royal I don't often write negative reviews. Usually I just don't get the point since I usually read music reviews when I'm looking for stuff to buy, so bad reviews aren't generally that helpful. But gosh this album is disappointing. The concept seemed so neat: give a whole bunch of bands with varying styles a groovebox (a few drum machines and a sampler and such) and see what they can come up with. Plus there were so many great bands on it: Cibo Matto, Bis, Pavement, Beck and so on. I figured I had to get it because I'm obsessed with quite a few of them. So I went for the double LP and put in my preorder and waited impatiently. I actually enjoyed it on the first listen. I mean, nothing really grabbed my attention right away, but it was nice to hear some new Cibo Matto. The problem is, after you listen to it more, it becomes pretty apparent that the whole concept behind it is pretty flawed: all of the bands got popular by exploring their own particular talents and being creative that way. When you give them all the same instrument and tell them to adapt to it, they all go for the way that it's traditionally used: dance music. The whole album is pretty much generic dance music; the kind that's labeled "techno" in the demo songs on Yamaha keyboards. There are some parts that stand out, like Bonnie "Prince" Billy's song and Cibo Matto's song, but in those cases it's because they don't seem like they fit in with the rest of the album. Probably the biggest disappointment for me was Beck's song, "Boyz". It's boring. It's one of those songs that just doesn't feel like it has a reason to exist, and Beck couldn't even cover that up with an interesting arrangement due to the constraints of the concept of the album. Sonic Youth's song is boring as heck as well, but at least it's boring in a "I'm not even trying to be interesting" kind of way. Yeah so this wasn't worth the investment. I mean, the Cibo Matto song is pretty nice, but if it was on one of their albums it would still seem like a low point. Bonnie "Prince" Billy is the only one who managed to make a song that didn't get muddled in with the rest of them, but it's just one song. Plus, they pretty much guaranteed that I'll never listen to the bonus tracks that are on the vinyl version by having circles separating them in the vinyl that keep the needle from going on until you pick it up and place it past them. I don't really care, though. Total score: 2 out of 514 |