These New Albums Stink!

The Worst Albums I've Reviewed So Far In 2021

Just a few weeks back I shared a bumper list of the albums I’d reviewed that I loved in 2021 – call it a slightly-late Half-Time Report (Covid has a way of postponing a few things). Anyway, it was a few things, an attempt to point out that even though reviews aren’t deemed important anymore there are people like me caught in the trap of still offering them. And that I actually still write a lot more reviews than I realise – and you can find out about some lesser known or fringe items. But is there a value to reviews in this day and age? Friday is new music day and you just dial up anything you want on Spotify or search a site for free that lists the new releases – you not only get to try before you buy, you don’t have to buy. You’re not paying.

Well, anyway, that was why I listed a bunch of reviews. That and the fact that I’m still known in some circles as The Mean Review Guy. So, you know, as soon as I shared a giant list of gushingly-positive reviews, someone wrote demanding a list of the shit albums. They wanted to see the albums I hated. And I said that sure, okay, that list would be coming….

So. Here goes then. Me further enabling people to say that I’m a negative guy. No matter that this list is tiny in comparison to the rave-reviews. The fact I can even highlight a few ‘bad’ albums means I’m harsh and tough and so on…and anyway…like I said, here goes.

These Albums (Reviewed by me in 2021) Stink!

Sammy Hagar & The Circle: Lockdown 2020
Sammy Hagar and his band The Circle – which features Jason Bonham (son of John) on drums and fellow ex-Van Halen bandmate Michael Anthony on bass – were part of the problem rather than the solution. Their turgid covers plodded along in the general direction of well-meaning I guess. But who could fucking care? Well now there’s the album! Yes, the thing you were supposed to be mildly in awe of – musicians jamming together remotely – is now captured in a format where you can’t see any of that and merely wonder why they’re cutting each song short and don’t sound all that great. The Red Rocker hasn’t handled the pandemic’s lockdown rules well – from hosting a recent New Year’s bash in his own club (but insisting it was only 50% capacity) to an amazing early Instagram plea to fans to stay strong in the hope he can get out there and play music again. He ends that message with the words, “I’m so horny”. Pandemic be damned, Sammy wants to connect with fans! Big time! So on this sub-30 minute rip through one rubbish new throwaway original ditty (opener, Funky Feng Shui) and the sorts of covers that fans might suggest are on point but are in fact nowhere near the mark we listen to what I’d love to write off as merely a bar-band. But Sammy and The Circle are exactly that so it might seem like a type of compliment. The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again lasts only two minutes, which in itself is a kind of cruel joke, until you hear Bonham’s training-wheels tambourine intro and Sammy sounding parched almost immediately. Good Enough, one of three Van Halen covers (cruel too in the year that Eddie left us) is not even close to good enough and Sammy’s adlib of “make sure we don’t spread the virus” is basically just code for “I’m horny!”

The Faggets: WE DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT SHIT
This 7 song, 12-minute EP with ALL CAPS song titles like YOU’RE A FUCKING IDIOT and I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON COCK is, I probably don’t need to say, not very funny. Punk shenanigans by musical vandals – and hey, spray the fucking wall for all I care and fill your dirty boots / spill from your filthy mouths…but it’s a yeah/nah from me basically. I guess you’re either on the bus or you’re not. And I’m just not. Not anymore. Which makes this review at least as much of a waste of time as this EP. And arguably took me longer to construct. And yeah – it’s all a big joke and they’re poking fun at the stupidity of being stupid. But still. Yeah/nah and actually nope. Big nope. No hope.

Various Artists: True Colours, New Colours
Of all the cruel jokes in the world, tribute albums tend to be a specially crafted insult. But this one, this is different. This one is brazen as all fuck. Warner Music decided to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Split Enz’ dynamic and dynamite True Colours – our greatest pop band’s world-beater of an album – by assembling a cloyingly “Trans Tasman” motley crew of largely recent has-beens (Ladyhawke, Bernard Fanning) to transmogrify top tunes. These people hate Split Enz! These people hate these songs! Chelsea Jade opens the new record by stripping Shark Attack of its paranoia, absurdity, hysteria, manic drive, and pop-song heart to deliver, well, some sort of skinny-dip of a torch song. Don’t take a song seriously that is not serious. What a fucking joke. Shihad gets the baking paper and a jumbo Crayola out to trace around I Got You. It sounds like one of Marilyn Manson’s cover versions. It is not as problematic as a Marilyn Manson cover version, granted. It’s also probably not quite as good. The Beths tear through What’s The Matter With You in two minutes and do exactly what you should do – they vibe to the instinct of the song and imbue their own flavour. It’s the highlight. And they clearly were drafted in by mistake because they clearly do not hate Split Enz. But The Beths already got all the good press in the world. So enough about this safe pair of hands. It’s Ladyhawke killing I Wouldn’t Dream Of It dead that deserves a column inch. Just the one. Fuck this is unique – a version that manages to strip the original of its qualities and somehow present nothing new at all. And whoever okayed Bernard Fanning taking the piano away from I Hope I Never and playing it as a guitar-led dirge with a plodding rhythm section is someone that shouldn’t be selling albums anyway. They should be selling shoes. Even Tim Finn singing Six Months In A Leaky Boat with the fucking Wiggles was more meaningful to Split Enz’ legacy than this. There’s a particular cruelty around the fact that these greenhorns cannot get close to the emotional depth of a well-delivered Tim Finn lyric and vocal or circle in the orbit of a Neil Finn melody’s mercurial grace. A better name for the album might have been Nobody Takes Me Seriously, that would have at least made sense. That actual song is covered by Lime Cordiale – and I’m still getting over that. Stan Walker’s version of Poor Boy isn’t really for me either – but as with The Beths’ inclusion this is one of the smarter choices. I like the way Walker has a go at aping Tim’s inflection whilst doing his own thing. I just don’t like the musical backing he’s been given, or chosen – it’s horribly thin and fey and again misses out entirely on the point of the song’s musical build and the way it was crafted to work with both the lyric and the way the lyric was delivered. True Colours closed with The Choral Sea, a bit of curious and wonderful prog-ish instrumental rock. I always thought it was a most wonderful impression of Genesis as a garage band. So of course that’s been killed with the kindness of a light and fluffy take by Pacific Heights. I’ve liked a lot of the Pacific Heights work over the years and then there’s been some I could care less about. I’m trying to care less about this soft, point-missing half-cocked Split Enz cover, let’s call it a remix actually since it appears to go in its own direction – when the roadmap was offered – and it misplaces any real hint of the song. The only accuracy that is consistent is that the original has a strange clout to it to cap a magical record and this is light and meaningless which is the perfect full stop (or question mark?) on an album of cover versions that should have been lit on fire and buried in a pit.

Ringo Starr: Zoom In - EP
Ringo returns with more content no one asked for – something he’s been doing since at least 1974. And when the best thing you can say about a new release is, “Thank fuck it’s an EP” that pretty much establishes the tone. Zoom In is Ringo’s new collaborative EP – his lockdown thing. He dialled in Sir Paul of Beatle-Buddies and Dave Grohl and a few others. And he made some middling music including the title track which basically tries to do an All You Need Is Love treatment for the technology that has made us feel connected over the last year. His end musical result makes Yellow Submarine and Octopuses’ Garden sound like A Day In The Life and In My Life. I always defend Ringo – because he’s a great drummer and he was in the greatest band and because he means well. He’s 80 and he long ago earned the right to do whatever the fuck he wants. But Zoom In really does challenge that right.  And when he goes dub-reggae for Waiting For The Tide To Turn and actually sings, “Let’s play some reggae music and it will be a better day” you want the Fat Controller Man to just fucking sit on him. But Ringo’s message is clear on the final track of this mercifully brief check-in that reminds us he’s still alive: Not Enough Love In The World. There’s not. He’s right. But there might now be more than enough solo recordings by Ringo Starr in this world.

Peter Frampton: Peter Frampton Forgets The Words
These are full-frontal assaults on the songs – they feel like Musical Instrument Store Hack Guide Tracks. The song selection is the most interesting aspect – the band stays on slow-burn, just in the background, no real subtlety but certainly no scene-stealing. Roxy Music’s Avalon is like some Espresso Guitar nonsense, George Harrison’s Isn’t It A Pity (a chance for the acoustic Frampton of Penny for Your Thoughts and All I Wanna Be Is By Your Side) should have been the title track. Peter Frampton Forgets The Point would have been a better title – since in almost every case the song in question is pulled to bits, plucked of anything feathery and paraded around only after the goose has been cooked. When it gets really bad (Lenny Kravitz’ Are You Gonna Go My Way) it is almost comical; you can almost see big bad boomers in Frampton tour T-shirts air-guitaring and mourning the fact there’s no talkbox bro! And it never really gets, er, good. Which is a shame because I’ve admired Frampton’s self-awareness in recent years, he gives good interview and seems to know about his place in the canon – he’s not trying to be anyone’s guitar hero and is just trying to sell some tickets and put on a show. Now there are no more shows to give, the story has been told in a memoir, Frampton Comes Alive has had its sequels and anniversaries, and this sad, tired collection of hackery and cliché is a horrific swansong. And it’s not even fun pulling it to pieces.

Van Morrison: Latest Record Project Volume 1
If you make it all the way down to a song called Why Are You On Facebook? (no, really) you will hear a level of self-parody so extraordinary that it would be a fair cop to look around the room for a hidden reaction-cam. Even though this is only-audio you could interpret it as a stunt so grand that somewhere, somehow, someone  was capturing the looks on faces when they made it to the end of the song. Does he mean this shit? Has he even listened to it back? These aren’t so much songs as they are 28 letters to an editor – set to placeholder-jazz. The 28 songs here feel like a metaphorical (and vaguely musical) Rat king of boomer-anger. Like Van is suddenly making a play for the title of King of the Boomers (hey, they’re okay!) He’s a target don’t you know. He signed a shitty deal once and is still angry about it – as if he never had a payday since 1967. FFS. He doesn’t trust the government, science, doctors, advisors, or anything that isn’t Van-approved. He is a sufferer of a long-con. Apparently. Which is super-rich and a little cruel to level at anyone prepared to make it all the way through this album. (Particularly since he is super rich and more than a little cruel). And the prize for making it through? A song called Jealousy – which basically says the only reason anyone might have for not agreeing with him is jealousy. 2020 was a weird year, and 2021 was always going to have its work cut out to top it. But Van Morrison slowly morphing into Mark Kozelek? I don’t reckon any of us saw that one coming. The music here just plods. And fucking plods. And the old boy sounds, well, fucking great actually – he’s in fine voice and he plays some sax – but he has nothing good to say. And the ways in which he is saying it are dishwater-dull and repetitive. This wet week of an album is almost a killer wind-up. Almost. But it’s also very threatening in its title. That Volume 1 hovers there less a misguided poke at humour and more the ever-lingering threat.

Amy Winehouse: Live at The BBC [3CD]
To mark the decade since Winehouse died of exhaustion and addiction we have this callous and lazy 3CD expanded editionof all the BBC recordings, mostly appearances from Later…with Jools Holland. Many of them crushing (slurring, shoddy) and most of them just underwhelming (over-enunciating). To pad out what was awful to begin with when it was first posthumously released as just a single CD with a DVD we have several versions of the same song. Two and three versions of everything and a lot of underwhelming content basically. A little slice of grave-robbing for the last of the CD-as-beer-coaster collector crowd. A little way to grab some cash from any fans willing to part with it in the hope of a thin thought that maybe they’re getting something more for their money. And yes, you’ll hear a pretty lovely version of Love Is A Losing Game, and she gets towards Billie Holiday with her phrasing at times. There’s a nice version of Valerie too, you might like the cover of To Know Him Is To Love Him. Look, you might like a few of these things in fact. But the point is – you don’t need to. And you don’t need this. And the release of it is cold and capitalistic and futile and somewhat ghastly if anything. And certainly lazy and cheap and the very best thing you can do to keep the memory of Amy Winehouse alive ten years on is listen to that debut album fresh. Listen to the one that followed. Think about the bewildering lack of support she was shown or given and make a promise, as you hear the best of her work again or for the first time in a while, that you’ll do your best to do right by anyone you know that is trapped in a world where addiction takes over and where support is the only thing that seems to run dry.

Weezer: Van Weezer
This is the fifteenth album by American band Weezer.
Here is a review of the album:

Menahan Street Band: The Exciting Sounds of Menahan Street Band
Here they return to instrumental grooves that feel like ready-built samples for modern R’n’B and rap. Here they return to tracing around the vibes from vintage Stax and Motown. And nearly a decade on from when they last released a record the vibe actually seems…lost. I mean, it’s possible that Menahan actually turned a few people on to those killer Isaac Hayes records. And now a new generation has those at their fingertips you’d almost wonder why they need to hear this as well. That may seem cold – but listening to this I was struck with a  school-reunion vibe. You can’t go back. You should never go back. You just can’t go back and have it feel the same way.

John Hiatt with The Jerry Douglas Band: Leftover Feelings
The Jerry Douglas Band is so good at evoking dusty trails – but it’s almost the Urban Outfitters version. The playing so tasteful, so precise as to almost become innocuous rather than thrilling. Douglas’ own dobro and slide work is sublime – but it’s just too slick. The raw edges trimmed with pinking shears.Breathlessly, other critics will tell you about Hiatt’s worth and standing as a great, great songwriter (which he is, and has been for, oh, 45 years or so by the way). I read somewhere that he’s never been better than right now. Um, Bring The Family would wholeheartedly disagree. So, speaking of breathless, let’s call out the big problem. John Hiatt’s voice is gone, man. It just isn’t here. To say he sounds parched is to call water wet. It’s beyond obvious. And, though some of these songs can withstand (The Music Is Hot) those are the songs that feel the most like album-filler. The ones that really need some heft, some heart, some grit just feel like they’re teetering on the house of cards that is a ransacked throat. Such a shame. Opener, Long Black Electric Cadillac, feels like the cruellest parody of post-Time Out of Mind Dylan. Changes In My Mind sounds like very late period Kenny Rogers. With no hook. And by the time of Sweet Dream, I’ve not only had it with mellifluous fiddles and jazzy guitars, I’m bored to somnambulance by a cracked-voice that’s on its last threads of the vocal chords. That Hiatt can write a song in his sleep has never been in dispute. That he can actually deliver it now is the heart-breaking worry. He should get off this horse right now. It’s dead.

Liz Phair: Soberish
One of the saddest things in the universe of music – to me, at least – is looking at Liz Phair’s discography as the ultimate case study for diminishing returns. Blaze a trail with the debut, you might never have asked to be a pioneer but the spirit and spit and snarl of those songs from a quarter-century ago felt like a real fuck-you to a boys club. I just liked the songs. Really great songs. And it flowed on over to the next record – and I used to be very charitable and say the one after that was okay too. But nah, really it was those first two. And since then we’ve just had banal rubbish. Weird attempts at being a pop singer without ever fully committing, without any real hooks to the songs and with the most pedestrian arrangements. Well, this new album might be the very nadir. Because it welcomes back the producer from those first two records (Brad Wood) – so you get your hopes up. Just a touch. And there’s absolutely nothing here worth hearing. Many of these songs feel like they’d play in the background of an episode of Friends – and not a reboot; I mean those cringey old episodes that were first recorded around the time The Real Liz Phair was making real music to really dig. It’s horrifying even bothering. Which is why this review is barely even doing that. What’s the fucking point? This is slow-death tragedy. And I hate it. I hate that I’m invested enough to keep checking in, fingers crossed, waiting. Hoping for the curse to break. But it’s just not going to happen. This is dead-duck music. The goose is cooked.

The Rolling Stones: A Bigger Bang Live On Copacabana Beach
So the big selling point here is you get four songs that weren’t on the package when it was first released – as a DVD. You get yet another Tumbling Dice and Oh No Not You Again (from the album A Bigger Bang). You get Sympathy For The Devil. Which, fuck me, is on every other bloody Stones live album so hardly a selling point. Less so, because the guitar solo is aimless and wanders lazily towards country, if anything. Nah, you just don’t need this. There’s no bigger bang at all. Tis but a whimper. And look, I was at a show on this tour – not this very show, but one rather similar, and I feel no nostalgia towards this whatsoever, despite enjoying the gig at the time. It just sounds old and tired now. Like The Stones. And yeah-yeah, like me whining about it too. I know.

Moby: Reprise
Reprise is like an alternative greatest hits where many of his best-recognised themes, melodies and motifs are reworked with cloying orchestral strings and guest vocalists. You are supposed to feel the shit out of this because the earnest album cover, the classical music label and the allegedly earned reverence tells you to. Plus, I’ll say it again – there’s strings. That’s like white-person musical K-Y Jelly, yo! Mark Lanegan and Kris Kristofferson provide the album’s emotional highpoint because, well, because it’s a dream pairing. Their crumbling croons across The Lonely Night are equal parts lovely and awkward. And it has nothing to do with Moby at all. I mean, beyond him booking them. Other decent singers like Mindy Jones, Apollo Jane, Eminem collaborator Skylar Grey and good ole Gregory Porter add their weight to this very white-sounding gospel-schmaltz. And it’s supposed to matter. Because before – or in and around – when Moby was a creepy wee sex-pest he was a purloiner of great tune-waft. He wasn’t just a pervert. He was a purveyor of This Must Mean Something-Music. With just enough of a hard-luck/obscurity story to hook a few of us in. I’m only writing this because I’ve been forever curious about the guy since overdosing on Play back in the motherfucking day. But I’m trying to feel something from Reprise. And all I feel is bemusement. It’s like he lit the sex-shop candles, summoned the string quartet, laid down the ceremonial baking paper, chose his finest-nibbed crayon and all just to trace around the very vacuity of his soul.

Dee Gees / Foo Fighters: Hail Satin / Live
This is how the Foo Fighters chose to commemorate 25 years of existence. Tongue in cheek, but also painfully earnest covers of disco-era Bee Gees. They called themselves the Dee Gees which is probably hilarious. They called the album Hail Satin which is also probably really funny. And then they set to work showing off Dave Grohl’s well-meaning falsetto and flattening the grooves of some sophisticated pop music – squishing it down between glass slides so that disco-tourists can nod and take photos. It all just screams – in a high pitch, natch – the privilege Grohl has had rebuilding himself into an iconic nice-guy metal-makes-good brand. There’s no artistry at all on display. Just cheeky grins and big-time mugging. A modicum of musical talent can take you a long way if you’ve got the right look, the right genes, were in the right slacker-icons band, etc. The whole thing feels like a long-form SNL skit without a laugh-track. And they should really have named it after one of the songs. Tragedy. But wait, the real horror arrives if you flip to side two. Actual Foo Fighters songs. New ones. Recorded live without a laugh track (required, you can supply your own) or an audience. Whatever promise there might have been on the first two records is long buried under two decades of hackneyed, sub-par Springsteen-isms. Songs built from a schematic that demands a shoutalong stadium audience have never sounded more empty than in a pandemic world. This is as excruciatingly soulless as music can get. It’s like a selfie that felt cute at the time. And you should definitely delete. And not later. Do it now. Right now. Use fire on it just to make sure. Stamp hard. And then drive two towns away before you call the police and report this mercy killing.

…and finally…Lorde: Solar Power
Well, I’m not actually allowed to write about Lorde. And to say I told you so would just be smug. So I reviewed the album in pictures. You can click the link to see that story. Empty as the album.

Now you might love some of these albums – and in every case I’ve given you a link to the music to check them out – because reviews are meaningless. But I would hope you’d note this is a much shorter list. The rave review list is much longer (and still growing!)

I can’t lie. It’s fun to write a review where you rip into the artist. You’ll maybe note I do it because I care. In most of these I’ve tried to understand the record, or I’ve been upset that an artist I once liked has sunk so low. Or something like that. I hate record-company cynicism and laziness. I hate cookie-cutter nonsense. I hate feeling let down. But I love music.

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And on that note, here’s this week’s playlist – your something for the weekend. (Vol. 27)

I hope you like it.

I hope you’re staying safe and well in your bubble. Let me know if there’s been any albums you’ve looked forward to this year and then you heard them and felt brutally let down.