NEWS: ?

Crommunist Review(e): Cake’s “Pressure Chief”

July 31st, 2006
Filed under Crommunist Review(e), Entertainment, Music

For my maiden voyage of this new feature, I’m going to fulfil a promise I made almost 2 years ago and review this album:

Cake: Pressure Chief

Pressure Chief

This is Cake’s 5th album, released in 2004, and their second on the Columbia label.

Track Listing

1. Wheels

  • Relative rating: 4/11
  • Star rating:

“In a wooden boat in the shipping lanes with the freighters towering over me, I can hear the jets flying overhead making lines across the darkening sky.”

This song is fun. On an album that is fun to begin with, this song stands out as particularly fun. Staying out of the tradition of deep longing breakup songs, this is a song about post-relationship freedom. Definitely a good song to start a mix-tape with (or an album, I suppose).

2. No Phone (released as a single)

  • Relative rating: 1/11
  • Star rating:

“No phone, no phone, I just want to be alone today”
I’m not sure why the band selected this one as a single. It’s not one of the stronger tracks on the album, and there are more memorable and Cake-like songs to choose from. At any rate, this is a quirky song relating the pressures of trying to achieve some peace in a world full of home, office and cellular phones.

3. Take It All Away

  • Relative rating: 6/11
  • Star rating:

“You keep pushing me away, in spite of what you say, I found out yesterday…”
Musically, this song is one of the better ones on the album. It’s much more brooding and deep than some of the other songs on the album. Definitely in contention for the least fun, but it’s got a very good beat. Listen for the comparison between the end of a relationship and a car accident… I think it’s pretty effective.

4. Dime

  • Relative rating: 8/11
  • Star rating:

“In the brown shag carpet of a cheap motel, in the dark and dusty corner by the TV shelf is a small reminder of a simpler time when a crumpled up pair of trousers lost a brand new dime.”

I really think this should have been the single from this album. It’s up-beat, peppy, and really indicative of the band. The song runs on a great metaphor, from the point of view of a dime “I am determined not to be dented by a car by a plane or anything not yet invented.”. This song is definitely worth a listen.

5. Carbon Monoxide

  • Relative rating: 3/11
  • Star rating

“Too much carbon monoxide for me to bear. Where’s the air?”

Al Gore definitely should have gotten this song for the soundtrack to An Inconvenient Truth. Again, this song is fun, upbeat, but with a sort of heavier message. It is a bit on the thin side when it comes to depth of lyrics, or musical expression, making it one of the weaker songs on the album.

6. The Guitar Man (cover of song by Bread)

  • Relative rating: 11/11
  • Star rating:

“Who draws the crowd, who plays so loud? Baby it’s the guitar man.”

I can’t get enough of this song. I didn’t know it was a cover the first few times I heard it. It’s a very Cake-like tune, with some changes to the beat and effects that are very distinctively Cake. A great chillin’ tune, very musically strong. If there’s any track on this album to check out, this is the one.

7. Waiting

  • Relative rating: 10/11
  • Star rating:

“So we think that we’re important, and we think that we make sense, and we think there’s something better on the other side of this fence.”

GREAT song. Despite the simplistic sound of the opening line, this is actually one of the most lyrically interesting and engaging tracks on the album. A good driving song; pretty cheerful.

8. She’ll Hang the Baskets

  • Relative rating: 2/11
  • Star rating:

“She’ll hang the baskets on the walls. Don’t you know I’ve seen it all before?”

A pretty good song, sort of a commentary on domestic life… I think… I’m not sure what’s in these baskets, or what they are supposed to represent.

9. End of the Movie

  • Relative Rating: 5/11
  • Star rating:

“People you love will turn their backs on you. You’ll lose your hair, your teeth, your knife will fall out of its sheath, but you still don’t like to leave before the end of the movie…”

This song is one of the most easily skipped on the album, but it might be one of the most poignant. The song is an observation about how our priorities as a society might not be as straight as we think they are. It’s REALLY simple, just banjo and some synthesizer in the background, but I like it, and I think you will too.

10. Palm of Your Hand

  • Relative Rating: 7/11
  • Star Rating:

“When the house was standing, you’d never have believed it…”

Some people bash me for being anti-USA. I don’t hate the US, I just bemoan what it has let itself become. This song (at least in my mind) reflects that quite well. Almost a lamenting look at what was once a proud structure, this song is quite fun, but with a message.

11. Tougher than it is

  • Relative Rating: 9/11
  • Star Rating:

“Well there is no such thing as you, it doesn’t matter what you do. The more you try to qualify, the more it all will pass you by…”

Once again, this is a good up-beat song, with a great beat and a fairly strong tune. The chorus of this song says it all nicely: “Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is.” A good message to all of us to keep things simple.

Overall impression

All things considered, this is not one of Cake’s better albums. In fact, in my opinion it’s the worst they’ve produced. Pretty one-dimensional, with some pretty good songs, good changes, but nothing to make it stand out. Each track (with one exception) is nice to listen to, but only two of them stand out as particularly good. I give this album 2 stars.

To buy or not to buy?

If you’re a Cake fan, then you’ll want to pick up this album. If you’re new to the band, do yourself a favour and take a pass on this one for now. Neophytes should look into either Fashion Nugget or Prolonging the Magic, my two personal favourites.

New Feature

July 14th, 2006
Filed under Crommunist Review(e), Entertainment, Music

You may (or may not) have notived that I haven’t posted anything new in quite a while. My excuse is that I have been working two jobs and trying to have a social life somewhere in between. A great many things have fallen by the wayside. However, I am going to try to pst SOME stuff over the summer, and so it is that I proudly announce the advent of a new feature of Porocrom:

Crom-prehensive Review(e)

In these review(e)s, I am going to examine in great depth a music album of my choice. I have a fair number of CDs that are worth reviewing, at least in my opinion, which is the only one that counts to you mindless peons. This is intended to be something of a companion piece to my serial “Bands I Like”, reserved somewhat for bands that may not have a lot of stuff out there but who have a great album, or a band that has an outstanding album.

Features:

  • Track-by-track breakdown: I will review each song on the album with a brief blurb
  • Song ranking: each song will be ranked both relative to the others on the album and on an ‘absolute’ scale (star system)
  • Album review: a look at the album as a whole, its strengths and weaknesses
  • To buy or not to buy?: is it worth the sticker price?

    • As always, if there is an album that you’d like me to review, send me e-mail and I will see if I can give a listen. Please note that if the band is super-obscure I may not be able to get my hands on all of the tracks. Also, if the band CLEARLY sucks, I’m not even going to bother.

    Anyway, expect some stuff to drop soon. Also, expect some regular Crommunist-type posting within the next couple of months.

    Giants

    May 30th, 2006
    Filed under Entertainment, Games, Rants

    A famous poet once said “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?”. Or was it Bob Dylan? Whoever it was, that is fucking stupid, because you already called him a man, retard. The truth is, that before someone can be called a man, he must do these things (women are excluded, they can do whatever they want, or not):

    1. Eat chocolate.
    2. Have sex.
    3. Say nothing while someone verbally abuses them for two months and then beat him into submission without sustaining a single scratch.
    4. Watch Family Guy, even reruns.
    5. Play Giants: Citizen Kabuto.

    I have done all those things, and let me tell you, they are immensely enjoyable. The enjoyment grows the further you go down the list, but I probably find Family Guy better than sex because the sex was really bad. I was actually thinking of watching Family Guy during sex. Oh well, at least I got paid.

    Best. Bluescreen. Ever.

    This brings me to my main point: Playing Giants: Citizen Kabuto is the greatest thing anyone can hope to do in their entire lives. This game kicks ass. If there was a contest between pirates, ninjas, robots and Giants: Citizen Kabuto, plenty of people would watch it, because they are all immature morons. Ninjas don’t exist, you fucking retards, and pirates are just Somalis trying to feed their families, they are not awesome. Also, robots. Have you seen a Roomba? That’s as advanced robots get. What the fuck can a mechanical cockroach do? Giants: Citizen Kabuto, though, kicks ass. It would win hands down.

    A bit about the game: You start off as an alien australian astronaut (say that ten times fast) or three and you get weapons and shit and try to destroy stuff while running around destroying stuff, building bases and generally being amazing. Then you become a woman who has no guns (except a sword) but many spells, and then you become the most amazing thing ever conceived by human imagination: Kabuto.

    Awe. And shock.

    Kabuto is awesome (I will buy a thesaurus later). He fulfills the three requirements for awesomeness:

    • He is taller than a tall building.
    • He can roar.
    • He can smash shit and eat people in cold blood.

    That, together with his offspring, that look like lizards, makes him the best thing ever. If Kabuto and King Kong fought, Kabuto would have anal sex with King Kong while watching Family Guy. That’s how awesome Kabuto is. When he eats enough sheep (or are they cows? something like that), Kabuto gets mad and shits an egg, which then produces an offspring which does Kabuto’s evil bidding.

    That is one doable sun.

    Overall, the game is beautifully designed and has great style. The writing is hilarious, almost as funny as Porocrom, but without all the repetitive crap. It cannot be classified in a single genre because it ranges from an FPS to an RTS to an STD. The stunning visuals, coupled with the witty script and imaginative quests are guaranteed to fuck your shit up with their awesomeness. Seriously, just look at this picture. Wouldn’t you do that sun? If I was a planet, I’d do that sun. The only downside is that the game was made in like, 1990 or something gay like that, when there weren’t even computers and the only way to play a game was to have Mexican immigrants do the math by hand and then draw the picture on the wall. The framerate suffered as a result, but it was mostly playable. The colours and all are quite great, but the lack of antialiasing might put you off a bit, but then you’re just a stupid fanboy who only cares about graphics and not about gameplay, in which case you should just go masturbate to your Lara Croft poster and leave me alone.

    Hawt.

    In detailing the awesomeness of the game, I have purposefully left out its best characteristic. The Reapers. You only actually play as one reaper, Delphi. Now, she is hot. P-H-A-T, hot. Well, in reality she looks kind of a dog to me, but she’s supposed to be really hot in-game since everyone falls in love with her and she is a princess and shit, plus you can like delete a file and have her play topless, and she has nice boobs, so who cares, I say she’s hot. She’s different from Kabuto and the Meccs in that she has spells and some sort of warp speed and a jet ski. That jet ski rocks, you can go anywhere with it, but the Meccs have a helicopter which is even more awesome and can drop bombs and shit and kick the shit out of other players. You can also jump out of the helicopter while it is really high and land safely by using your jetpack as a lander.

    This game is amazing. Sadly, it was a rather huge commercial failure due to its numerous bugs (although there are patches to fix those nowadays) and if you want it you can get it for like $2 at bargain bins. Seriously, if you find it at one buy it, what’s $2 anyway, you can’t even get a decent blowjob for that.

    Horror Movies

    April 20th, 2006
    Filed under Entertainment, Movies

    I just saw House of Wax and I want my fucking hour back. What an utter load of fucking shit. It was about a city where some brothers kill and maim and whatever, bleh. I realise films require some suspension of disbelief, but this fucking movie required suspension of brain activity in order to be enjoyed. No, not really, not even braindead people would enjoy it. In fact, they would detest it. Anyway, as I was watching it, getting ideas on how to kill the friend that suggested it, I began to identify some of the cliches of horror films. Seriously, come to think of it, all these movies are always, always the same. I will elaborate on what I mean anon:

    When being chased by someone, forget to walk.

    Why is it that when the killer chases someone, that dude never remembers how walking goes. I mean, how fucking often have you tripped and fell in the last 20 years of your life? Seriously, it’s right foot, left foot, it shouldn’t be that fucking hard. Also, when someone’s chasing you and you fall, don’t get up immediately, just take your fucking time, what’s he going to do anyway, kill you? Nah. Lying down and staring at him is a surefire way to scare him away, do that.

    When hiding, don’t be quiet.

    There’s someone after you and you manage to pick your ass up from the ground long enough to find an abandoned warehouse, conveniently placed in the middle of the desert. You get in and find a hiding place, and the killer waits patiently for you to hide and comes in, even though he was just two seconds behind you. So, now that you are safely hidden, what can you do to pass the time? That’s right, sneeze. Don’t feel obliged to be quiet, that’s rude. Sneeze, cough, play with some bones and scream when a severed head falls, whatever, it’s all good.

    If you manage to injure the killer, walk away.

    Picture this: You’re walking through an abandoned town, complete with everything people have in houses, and you know there is one or more killers in the vicinity. Don’t stop to take anything, and if you see knives or guns around just leave them there. If, despite what I just said, some kind of lame weapon like a baseball bat or a crossbow falls in your hands, try to injure the killer. When you do, he will invariably fall to the ground and obviously die. You don’t really need to check or make sure he’s dead in any way, because, well, you just put a dart through his fucking skin! If that’s not a fatal wound, I don’t know what is. “Hey, wanna check if the dude’s dead?” “Nah, just leave his gun and yours and let’s go to the other buildings, it’s cool.”

    The killer dies.

    This is an extension of the previous rule. The killer never dies, you idiot. Even if he somehow dies now, he’ll be alive in the sequel. This is actually a pretty good way to discover who the killer is, just kill everyone on the cast, whoever doesn’t die is the psychopath. Other people will die by the dozens, just smack them in the face and they die, but you can bludgeon, shoot, burn, poison, hang, maim, burn, poison, shoot, maim, maim the killer and he’ll still be alive to kill again. That’s why you see three and four sequels to a god-awful movie.

    The killer can’t walk through walls.

    No matter where you are, no matter how well you’ve looked around before you get in there, the killer is in there with you. I don’t care if you just jumped in a coffin and locked the lid, the killer will either be hiding under the pillow or slip in through the crack. Just when you think you’ve lost him, he’ll come and stab you in the ass with his dick. Can you say “anal rape”?

    Whatever you do, don’t stick together.

    Hey, you’re 12 people against one killer and you’re trying to avoid dying. Obviously, the best way to do that is to split up, because, let’s face it, noone is going to kill 12 people one by one, right? Right. So, don’t arm yourselves, don’t stick together, don’t even try to get the fuck out of wherever you are, just split up and roam around aimlessly. Statistics have shown that people who do that have a 95.7% chance of survival, and that’s a damn good chance.

    So, there you have it. An unofficial guide on how to survive a (bad) horror movie. By the way, Elisha Cuthbert is quite the hotness. Nice boobs. Paris Hilton could use some face ironing, but nice body. Yes, this post has descended to boob talk, sic transit gloria mundi.

    Bands I Like - Scram Jones

    March 1st, 2006
    Filed under Bands I Like, Entertainment, General, Music

    My life must be pretty uninteresting these days, because I am posting another installment of…

    Bands I like

    This edition focuses on yet another rapper. I realize that technically he isn’t a BAND, but he might as well be. This is an artist that was also referred to me by Ken, who is way more up on the hip-hop scene than I am. This is a guy who is often referred to as a ‘triple-threat’ for his skills as an MC, a DJ and a producer. I’ve never heard anyone rhyme quite like…

    Scram Jones

    Listening to Scram is almost like listening to a standup comedian mixed with Dr. Seuss… mixed with the streets of New York. According to interviews, he’s been mixing since he was 15, and pretty much involved in every part of the underground he could get into since then. It’s interesting to hear about a white guy making it big in an industry that is essentially 100% black (except the lawyers), but what is even more interesting is that he does it better than 99% of these so-called ganstas from the hoods of various cities. I’ve never heard any of the top 10-selling artists spit with the same level of artfullness as Scram (with special exception being made for Kanye West).

    There’s something almost playful about the way that Scram raps. I’ve never heard anyone else (in rap or outside of rap) put this kind of a spin on rhyming. It’s not something that can be adequately conveyed in text alone, but I’m going to try. This is a cut from his track “Change Ya Rosta”

    I almost lost my 20/20 drinking 20/20, The kind of kid that they would talk about on 20/20 Take the rims off of a Jeep, I got 20 20s, Sell ‘em for 400 apiece, just give me 20 20s. … Y’all don’t know the shit you’re in I’ll leave you in a pool of of piss now you’re in urine And you can’t get out ‘cause once you’re in, you’re in Now you wanna spaz out like (Yrrrin! Yrrrin!)

    Again, it’s not something that can really be conveyed through reading it, but I swear, this guy’s unbelievable. He’s got these incredible one-liners that clearly show off both his comedic genius for even coming up with these things, but his artistic genius as well for fitting them into a rhyme. In fact, those of you who know me well know I love making outrageous analogies or similies… I got it from Scram. Some of my favourites are:

    “Two bitches gave me mono, now I’ve got stereo”
    “I tried to become a vegetarian but it was hard to stop cold turkey”
    “My flow is like lard, PHAT. While your style’s on a diet with no carbs”
    “Yeah your rhyme’s the shit… why? ‘cause it’s crap”
    “I used to ride with no hands on the handlebars/now my hand’s on the mike, watch me handle bars”

    The list goes on, and Scram fans will undoubtedly say “What about this one?” but you get the idea. If you are a hip-hop fan AT ALL… at all at all at all… check out Scram Jones. He’s a bit undeground, so it may be a little difficult to get your hands on the goods. If you’re Jonesin’ really bad, e-mail me and I’ll see what I can do.

    Tracks to Check Out

    - Back to Back (f. Rob Swift & X-cutioners) – Air it Out (f. Jack Venom) – Heavy Metal (f. Kool G. Rap) – 3’s Company (f. Swigga & Eddie Brock) – Line Up (f. Styles P.) – Change Ya Rosta – Liquid Heat

    Seriously… check this guy out!

    « Previous Entries
    Next Entries »