Arctic Monkeys
Favorite Worst Nightmare
(Domino Recordings)
The
first track is, I think, the first single "Brainstorm." It has a
little bit of a harder edge than most of the stuff on their first album.
It is a good song and it really sets the mood for the album, this isn't
going to be a collection of catchy rock songs. "Teddy Picker" is
a great song, one of my early favorites. Although the lingo of the title
is totally and completely lost on me I'm assuming it is a British thing),
the song is really quite great. An infectious bass line drives the track
the entire time. "D is For Dangerous" is another pretty good
rock song, the album starts in a very similar manner to their debut, but
not quite as catchy and with more interesting guitars.
"Balaclava" is next, the first song that isn't a real standout.
Nothing bad about it, but not too interesting.
"Fluorescent Adolescent" is a good track, a bit slower
than the first 4 tracks, but it works. "Only Ones Who Know"
really slows things down and was pretty boring, the slowest song up to
this point on the album is also the longest, odd. "Do me A Favor"
picks the pace up a bit, but isn't especially memorable. "This House
Is A Circus" is another not too memorable track. The next, 'If You
Were There, Beware" has some interesting guitar work, but there isn't
a good hook, again.
The last part of the album is kicked off by "The Bad Thing" and
is quite a bit more interesting than most of the recent tracks, it is also
much shorter, I see a trend. "Old Yellow Bricks" is pretty good
too, despite Wizard of Oz references. The final track, "505"
which is a slow, momentum building track that is pretty well done, a very
good closing track.
This album seems to be a dedicated effort to move away from making catchy
rock music like "I Bet That You Look Good on the Dance floor."
The album has a darker feel overall. The guitar work immediately stands
out as being more interesting than the first album. The vocals aren't as
catchy, but at times they still produce memorable moments. Overall, a good
sophomore album, it is very hit-or-miss, with the misfortune of packing a
lot of the misses together in the middle of the album, but their debut was
very similar.
The Best Damn Thing
(RCA)
There
was apparently no need to worry that marriage (to Sum 41`s Deryck Whibley)
would mellow Avril Lavigne. The Canadian rocker`s third album is a mostly
sassy`n`snotty affair on which she sounds even younger than when her debut
album, 2002`s 'Let Go,' went multiplatinum.
After a darker and more contemplative follow-up, Lavigne lets lose this time with such double-speed, punk-inflected tracks as "Everything Back But You," man-smashing slap-downs like "I Can Do Better" and the title track. There`s also hater shots at wannabes ("One of Those Girls"), along with proclamations of her own empowerment, like when she declares, "I`m the one who wears the pants!" in "I Don`t Have to Try."
The gleeful adolescence is even more pronounced when she tries her hand, lightly, at rapping on a couple of songs. It`s all done with a grin, of course, which makes the three ballads sound particularly out of context alongside the heavy `tude of their companions.
