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Monday 1 December 2008

Worst Albums of 2008


There is nothing more stomach churningly pathetic than a pop music critic; being a member of the Those who Cannot Do, Critique Club I own this insight as an unrepentant hater with equal distaste for critics as those who make unequivocally bad music. Of course, we could deconstruct quality to the point where previously derided and shamelessy commercial records earn praise due to their clarity of intent unfettered by pretentions to art or equally, we could pose as the ultimate postmodernists, contrarians inverting the cultural marxism of Theodor Adorno where in the words of Daryl Mac bad music is actually 'not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good.' But for the purposes of this series, it is important to set a categorical imperative of Kantian proportions where the world has not turned upside down providing the verb to hate on with objective foundations in everyday reality.

And thus my first selection for Worst Albums of 2008 is Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's Old Money . My hate here is more disappointment than unfettered contempt as Mr. Rodriguez-Lopez has both musical knowledge and impeccable taste powering former progenitors of scythe-edged simplicity At the Drive In. He also has little care for the trends proffered by the Cognoscenti of Postmodern Cool where a band as grating, artless, and puerile as Los Campesinos earns praise for being 'bratty' and 'brash.' Unluckly for us neither of these translate into the ability to produce qualitatively good music.

For one, Old Money works on the premise that modern capitalism is as swollen and unethical as the early 20th century where robber barons and rentiers hoarded vast proportions of any nation's industrial wealth. While I agree that the present is filled with the predatory past, a bloated shred-fest owing as much to Steve Vai as Frank Zappa is hardly capable of embodying such scathing class critique, clever titles aside. Plus, while I find it difficult to envision Messrs. Rockefeller and Vanderbilt dancing the Charleston to the sounds of Old Money, I can easily imagine modern oligarchs propped up by new money like Roman Abramovich and Mark Cuban bumping rails of coke to the sounds of 'Family War Funding (Love Those Rothschilds)' while the world outside continues to drown in its own hemophilia.

Second, the contents of Old Money are unlistenable. In fact, try as I may, I have not been able to trudge through more than thirty seconds of each song. Though that in itself may be enough to add this title to my Contrarian Doucebag Best of 2008.

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