Cobra Starship - ¡Viva La Cobra! (Warner) // www.cobrastarship.com
Cobra Starship returns with their sophomore release, ¡Viva La Cobra!. This is the album the band hoped to make the first time around. Where While The City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets failed, ¡Viva! excels. The album seriously takes everything that While The City Sleeps tried to be and doubles it. La Cobra is twice as danceable, twice as polished, twice as poppy, the lyrics twice as obnoxious. I mean when you can pull off spelling out “scandalous” you’re a winner in my book. Vocalist and lyricist Gabe Saporta takes all the club culture stereotypes and takes them out for a dance-rock ride. The result is a guilty pleasure, except without the guilt. I have no qualms blasting this CD for everyone to hear. It is pure dance rock, egotistical ecstasy. Anyone with an ear for pop music would be insane not to give a spin. Whether you listen to Fall Out Boy (“Smile for the Paparazzi”), R. Kelly (“Kiss My Sass”), Maroon 5 (“Angie”), or Head Automatica (“Guilty Pleasure”) there is a pop tune on ¡Viva! La Cobra for you. “The world is ending and I’m throwing the party,” or so Gabe says on “Guilty Pleasure”; make sure this is one party you don’t skip to stay home and watch reruns of Scooby Doo (erm..not that I’m speaking from experience…).
Jimmy Eat World - Chase This Light (Tiny Evil) // www.jimmyeatworld.com
Jimmy Eat World triumphantly returns with Chase This Light, the band’s sixth full-length. The Arizonians stay on course with Chase, a natural progression from Futures. It surprises me that this band hasn’t continued to get bigger after their success with Bleed American. They should be at the forefront of alternative rock today, but instead we are stuck with….Nickelback. Jimmy Eat World’s latest release is a no-brainer for fans of the band and should be an essential listen for anyone with a taste for alternative rock. The band is exceedingly effective at creating radio-perfect rock tunes that defy genres allowing for music aficionados and casual rock fans alike to appreciate it. The band has finally shaken their emo beginnings and emerge as pop rock kings with hooks large enough to snag a blue whale. With Chase This Light, Jimmy Eat World continues to refine and improve their home run radio-single formula.
Say Anything - In Defense of the Genre (J-Records) // www.sayanythingmusic.com
Say Anything’s In Defense of the Genre has been one of the most hyped up albums in the emo/pop-punk/whatever-you-want-to-call-it genre of the year. However, its aspirations are its downfalls. This album is just too damn overambitious. In attempting to create a massive bible for scenesters to swear by, Max Bemis instead created an incoherent 27 track mess. Now, I’ve heard that the album should be judged as a whole and is much better that way, but, I really don’t see how this is true if I have to cringe through some of the tracks for a minute until I mercifully press “next.” To me it doesn’t make sense to have an album only be “worthwhile as a whole” when the whole is a random assortment of 27 tracks spanning nearly one and a half hours. I’m fairly certain that Max took every single musical idea he had and threw it into this mess. This album wouldn’t be half bad if it was only 10 tracks, however, unfortunately for him (and us?), it is 27, and therefore I will judge all 27 tracks of this ugly conglomerate behemoth. I’m considering unchecking the songs I don’t like (an embarrassing percentage of them) on my iTunes in order to create the album I would have liked to listen to. And yes, that means there are salvageable parts of this shipwreck, however, they are too far lost within this mess for me to warrant giving this album as a whole a favorable recommendation. If you’re a serious Say Anything fan, you’re not going to ignore this album anyways so feel free to find the sparse gems within this labyrinth of an album, but it will not be the experience you were hoping for.
Coheed & Cambria - No World For Tomorrow (Sony) // www.coheedandcambria.com
Do you have a lack of headaches and perfect hearing? Do you constantly find yourself turning up the radio as loud as you can, but simply can never satisfy yourself? You may be suffering from severe rock deficiency. Thankfully I, Dr. Curty B, can prescribe you the perfect antidote: Coheed and Cambria. The New York natives’ most recent effort, No World For Tomorrow, may actually be an overdose in combating your lack of rock. For those who have never listened to Coheed and Cambria, imagine the most complicated metal guitar work you can, but minus the crunch and dirt, now add Claudio Sanchez’ frantically soaring vocals ala 70s rock and a science fiction storyline spanning the entire band’s catalogue and you’ve got more rock than you can throw your horns up at. However, the secret to Coheed’s success is the pop sensibility they manage to inject amongst all the roaring guitar parts. While their guitars may never become typical for one second throughout the album, Coheed is brilliant at crafting sing-a-long choruses that pop-rock enthusiasts can even find themselves belting out in the car. Those who appreciate technicality and those that find solace in stuck-in-your-head choruses have found their perfect midway point, Coheed excels at both. With No World For Tomorrow Coheed and Cambria take their award-winning formula and perfect it. I can honestly say I have no qualms about this album; No World… met and exceeded every expectation I had. So please, take your doctor’s orders and immediately take a large dosage of Coheed and Cambria’s No World For Tomorrow.
