So this week I finally upgraded to an iPod Touch. It’s really a nifty piece of technology, though I find the lack of continuous video playback to be a bit stifling. That said, it’s not as frustrating as having to decide what music was going to be taken off of my 4GB iPod Mini whenever I purchased something new.
I should be raving about how awesome it is to be living in the year 2007. But instead I’m lamenting one of the other purchases I made on Wednesday—Joanna Newsom’s Have One on Me.
I don’t know why I picked it up.
Actually I do. I picked it up because of the ton of hype surrounding it. I’d seen her name in Paste and Entertainment Weekly. Plus The Music Slut totally cosigned her. And I’m always curious when “artists” have ambitions that can’t be contained in a single disc.
But man, Have One on Me is not for me. Let me see if I can pinpoint what exactly rubs me the wrong way… Um, everything? She’s got a voice that can be described as “interesting” but not really engaging. I find her arrangements and lyrics to be overdone. I just find the whole thing to be sort of pretentious, which is odd because I’m usually a fan of pretentiousness. But here it just feels wrong.
That disastrous trial got me thinking about other leaps that I’ve taken with similar results.
UNKLE – War Stories
I loved Psyence Fiction. In fact, if I had been writing in 1998 it probably would have been my number one album that year. So, when I heard that they were releasing something else, I figured I’d try it out.
But a DJ Shadow-less UNKLE is a scary and sad thing. It’s sad because it takes a crap on the legacy of an album that I hold dear to my heart, and it’s scary because it shows just how naïve I really am.
Jim Jones – Harlem: Diary of Summer
I love Cam’ron. And in 2005 I was halfway through my Las Vegas experiment. Apparently I was really missing the East Coast, because how else could you explain my purchasing of this album? I never hopped on the Dipset bandwagon and I never really cared for Jim Jones (he always felt like a louder, less talented, less entertaining Dame Dash.)
Yet I have this album. And it haunts me to this very day.
Skillz – Confessions of a Ghostwriter
Again, apparently 2005 was a dark period in my life because it’s also when I picked up this album. In my defense, Skillz puts out an awesome song every year (his yearly wrap-up) which is more than most emcees can say.
But it doesn’t sound that far-fetched; he’s a talented emcee he should be able to put a decent album out. The only thing that keeps this album from being disappointing is that no one had high expectations for it.
Lloyd Banks – The Hunger for More
In 2004, everyone seemed to be head-over-heels for G-Unit and 50 Cent—everyone except me. And since I’d heard that Lloyd was a spitter, I figured I’d try out his album, despite my finding 50’s debut to be underwhelming.
I’ve never felt dirtier in my life, and I’ve stolen candy from babies and had sex in a church. Possessing this album is like my scarlet letter. It’s the cross that I bear to remind me of when I was too weak to stand up for my own convictions.
And now Joanna Newsom joins the list of skeletons in my musical closet.
It’s times like this that I wished that I drank, so at least I could blame it on being drunk.
