I don’t normally do album reviews because I just don’t have
the ability to cut apart and explain an album’s arc like other people who put
together album reviews but I just put
and pushed myself through quite the nightmarish experience that I never want to
go through again with the only solace being on Twitter venting about it during
the listen to this album in the hope that NOBODY else will put them through
what I did willingly.
The album is from “indie pop” trio AJR entitled “Neotheater”,
it’s this group’s third album after the release of their widely panned
sophomore album “The Click” in 2017. I didn’t listen to “The Click” mostly
because I had seen several reviews on Youtube suggest it was one of the worst
albums of the entire decade and decided that I’d be better off avoiding and
stick to listening to other albums which were much more appealing to me anyway
however that wasn’t the case this time around with “Neotheater” because I
somehow got the idea that this album couldn’t possibly be as bad as had been suggested
by Jon at ARTV so of course I decided to give “Neotheater” a go.
Folks, “Neotheater” by AJR is comfortably one of the worst
albums I have ever had the displeasure of listening to and am left wondering
who the hell thought this absolute rancid load of faux deep garbage, that
wouldn’t be out of place being played on Satan’s P.A system on repeat as a form
of torture, was good enough for the public to hear because seriously there are
next to no redeeming factors from this album.
Let’s deal with the lyrics because for the most part the lyrics are just inane
whinging that lacks the self-awareness or any basic grounding to make any of it
interesting especially in terms of the arc of growing up and the fear of
becoming adults especially as within the first two or three songs, the whinging
becomes really quite insufferable.
Take for example, the track “Karma” where they are bemoaning
that they aren’t getting anything in return for being “Good, helpful and
friendly” but complains that even though he is being all those things, he feels
‘hollow’ and that he is getting no good karma from being all these things in
return. What do you want, dude? A fucking pat on the back or congratulations
that you’ve managed to be good all year? Cause that ain’t going to happen. Also
you fail to address the fact that by helping somebody and being friendly that
you feel good about yourself but “Karma’ doesn’t do that instead the song goes
on and on about all these bad things that have happened in spite of the good
things he has done which of course he doesn’t outline in any of the verses.
Now let’s talk about “Beats”, a song so irreversibly stupid
I wondered what the point of putting it on the album was. “Beats” is basically
a song where AJR wonder if they’ll get money for promoting Beats headphones by
Dre so they can pay for recording the whole song while in the verses wondering
whether people will recognise their songs should some sadistic supermarket play
them while they are in the produce aisle. Quite why a supermarket would play
this garbage AJR call music I don’t know.
There are so many more examples of awful lyrics like the
contemptible “Break My Face” or the nonsense that is “Don’t Throw Out My Legos”
– well let’s deal with the latter because this song really sums up the
immaturity and sheer lack of growth in the song writing, which is ironic
considering this album is supposedly all about growing up, that AJR have shown in two years since they
released “The Click” and made me wish that they’d step on lego so they could
feel the similar pain I felt listening to this mind numbing abortion of a song.
AJR are moving out of home and all they think to say to their parents before
they head for their new home is “Don’t Throw Out my Legos” after years of being
fed, clothed, educated etc by these poor parents and all your worried about is
mum and dad not throwing out the lego so the lego is there in case you return
home. TAKE THE GOD DAMN LEGO WITH YOU THEN. At least Carrie Underwood’s “Don’t
Forget to Remember Me” had a semblance of being grateful for everything her mum
and dad had done for her.
What makes all of this worse is the production which for the
most part a mono genre slurry where AJR try to have a whole lot of noise and
when there is a small moment where something sounds good, it gets hit with some
noise to make you want to cringe. Take for example “Wow, I’m Not Crazy” which
features a high pitched voice going “Yep Yep Yep yep” and it sounds atrocious,
at leat when the Martians on Sesame Street repeat “Yep yep yep yep” to
oblivion, they occasionally added an “Uh huh” to make interesting and it
actually sounded good, the noise on “Wow, I’m Not crazy” made me want to throw
things out the window.
“Here’s the Entertainment” has gang vocals and oh a pitched
whistling sound over the chorus for no god damn explainable good reason. For
me, most of the production on this album was just noise after noise that set my
teeth on edge,
At most, this album and its arc of not wanting to grow up or
face reality as an adult is very much represented in terms of the way AJR write
their music with very little maturity or with any pathos that would make any of
this mono genre slurry or really bad two year old joke interesting.
This gets pretty damn generous 1/10 and that’s only because
I don’t believe in awarding 0/10. I can only hope AJR go away and do some solid growing up in terms of their songwriting and lyrics writing because this was just headache inducing
