Sigur Ros "Kveikur" [2013]

Imagine hallucinating from being stuck on an iceberg for a month by yourself and you'll get a pretty good idea what you're in for here. Sounding like the elfin love children of Cocteau Twins and... I dunno, those German weirdos from Can or something, Sigur Ros takes pains to turn the word "ambient" into an insult. Of course they're from Iceland -- what self-respecting Westerner from any real country would try to break into the music business recording the aural equivalent of melting icicles? Thing is, these guys had already been around awhile before "Kveikur" (whatever in the fucking hell that means) came out, updating the Deep Forest-style soundtrack at that crystals-and-incense bookstore you only go into last-minute when you forgot to buy a Christmas present for somebody. There's so much echo and unnecessary noise in between the female-registered guy singer Jonsi Birgisson's utterly indecipherable flights out of the stratosphere that it's next to impossible to hear Milton Nascimento telling this guy to grow a pair of balls. It's apparent Sigur Ros is interested in illustrating what music would be like in heaven (or at least Coldplay's version of it), but isn't pretending to be in heaven when you're still alive the kind of creepy thing that Mormons usually do?

Jurassic 5 "Power in Numbers" [2002]

If it seems as first that Jurassic 5 is merely hawking the hip-hop gimmick of doing it "old school," think again; these dudes ain't faking it -- they're all really that old. They think what they're doing is fresh, the way Dad still sports that silk shirt un-ironically. On "Power in Numbers" (referring, again, to their advanced ages), J-5 is bringing us "back to the days of yes y'allin'"... 15 full years after Chuck D wrote that shit off as passe. Some people never seem to learn. Meanwhile, J-5 spends most of "Power in Numbers" pretending like they're taking us all to school because each of this crew's rappers -- basso cartoon character Chali 2na and bippity-boppity Zaakir in particular -- keep confusing "age" with "wisdom." The only way this album could be worse is if DJ Cut Chemist dug into the tired, dusty catalog of Marley Marl the way the rappers keep hitting up the tired, dusty Treacherous 3. And just in case their prehistoric hip-hop schtick is still somehow lost on anybody, they fly in audio from old B&W instructional films and bring back Big Daddy Kane from complete obscurity. And for all the media push, "Power in Numbers" still didn't sell shit. Basically, the good thing about dinosaur poop is that you might be able to generate a small out of energy from it, but the bad thing is it's bound to pollute your immediate environment. Even most hip-hop fans are smart enough to recognize that.

Led Zeppelin "Led Zeppelin II" [1969]

As if the horrid bombast of this band's debut wasn't enough for a single year, Jimmy Page managed to throw together a few soundcheck riffs and solos to cobble the follow up to Led Zeppelin's initial offering -- one that made legions of actual bluesmen and women give up the music scene out of sheer disgust. Look up "ham-fisted" in the dictionary and you'll find a picture of this band. Apparently music fans from the late 60s were scrambling to escape the "weed-smoking country music" aesthetic of the time, and settled for having their brains bashed in by this group of limey Satan-worshipping criminals. How to describe the misguidedness of a song like "Whole Lotta Love" -- a 5 1/2-minute "single" featuring a campy haunted house breakdown that makes about as much sense as if Alice Cooper had recorded "Welcome to My Nightmare" with a middle section of porn music? Elsewhere, Page's brittle fingers are incapable of getting through any guitar solos without tripping into a heap of ineptitude. And all this before remarking on the shrieking phony viking Robert Plant having absolutely zero worldview that he didn't rip-off from Willie Dixon (in later albums, his worldview would expand to "being a rock star who ripped off Willie Dixon" and "Hobbit fan"). Between these twits and drunken molester John Bonham, John Paul Jones would surely have resigned in his own sheer disgust had this band not been right in the sweet-spot of reaping tons of money from stupid American teenagers.

Neil Young "Harvest" [1972]

Those alt-rockers who weren't inspired by the profound suckassity of the Velvet Underground undoubtedly got theirs from Neil Young. And "Harvest," which quite uncalled-for sported an actual #1 Billboard hit single (just how stoned was everybody back then, anyway?), is the bible for severely untalented music mopes like Flaming Lips, etc. If it's been awhile since you revisited this album -- not like if you've turned on classic rock radio in the past several decades, at which I can tell immediately you're still extremely familiar with Young's most popular songs -- take it from me: Bob Dylan is not the worst singer/guitarist/harmonica player on the scene at the time. Apparently, Young and his record company couldn't tell the difference between Joni Mitchell's talent and Neil Young's... opposite of that -- both of their voices hit incredibly annoying frequencies, with frequency. Young's frail, high-pitched whine sounds unmistakably like someone who's gotten kicked in the nuts before every single verse he sings; you'd think he'd eventually have grown used to it and managed something resembling firmness if not strength, but we listeners just aren't that fortunate. And if he's responsible for legions of awful alternative bands' existence, then the Beatles are ultimately responsible for Young: don't tell me he wasn't trying to perform his songs more stonededly than they were toward the end. Way to lower the bar for the 70s, fellas. Thanks so much.

Boston "Boston" [1976]

Faceless, soulless, paint-by-numbers corporate rock by a collegiate pinhead and an oversized group of session-caliber musicians = big-hit during the U.S.'s bicentennial (of course it was!). If we didn't know we were spiraling downward rapidly as a society back then, it's crystal clear in retrospect. "Boston" is schlock that's been positively shellacked. Overdubbing guitar and vocal tracks with an uncommonly ridiculous compulsiveness that seems to want to shame both Jimmy Page and Freddie Mercury while coming off like a more svelte (but just as hairy) Bachmann Turner Overdrive, Tom Scholz, Bradley Delp and their partners in arena-rock crime wound up shaming everyone who turned on a radio in the mid-70s. A mere five years after the "important" people in rock all offed themselves, the rock music industry wound up already completely devoid of any integrity. This is clearly what happens when the leaders of a genre die, burn out or otherwise stop leading: we get glossy boneheaded "professionalism" like Foreigner, Journey and these anal-retentive schmucks. The music here is so sterile the band members all should be wearing lab coats; fittingly, as everything was indeed created in a lab at MIT. And then they have the audacity to claim they're "just another band out of Boston"? I'm glad Epic Records ripped them the fuck off.

Guided by Voices "Bee Thousand" [1994]

Trying unsuccessfully to suck as badly Pavement and Dinosaur Jr, a drunken schoolteacher-led band of rustbelt slackers learn on the fly they can't keep time or in tune. It thus becomes difficult to understand if they're failing classic rock or failing alterna-suck. Whichever it is, that's Guided by Voices -- slumming it lo-fi and lo-life, dashing off sub-2-minute (and sub-worthwhile) garage-band vignettes like a cassette of song ideas reminiscent of irritatedly and constantly switching the radio dial in a particularly pretentious liberal arts college town. This is borne out, too, when one tries to decipher the aggressively meaningless song titles and lyrics on "Bee Thousand;" filling syllables with nonsense is apparently easier than describing anything real, and besides, it might get too close to taking a stand for something. This kind of shit is catnip for douchebag Gen-Xers who like to declare their own intellectual superiority over anyone who might dare say "Bee Thousand" is an utterly random collection of words and riffs somewhere on a trash heap between Captain Beefheart's insanity and John Lennon's junked-out gibberish, minus any of the talent. Basically, even though Paul Westerberg was a complete weenie by the mid-90s, at least he never tried to force opaque, phony artsiness on anyone. Wow -- hard to believe Westerberg was cooler than anyone back then.

Ryan Adams "Gold" [2001]

Just when you thought it was safe to listen to Mellencamp-free radio, here comes heartland shmendrick Ryan Adams. Perhaps with the installation of George W. Bush as president, Adams' record company thought Reagan-era aesthetics would come back in a big way; we were too smart for that this time around, though -- Ryan Adams likely still gets confused with the guy who wrote "Summer of '69." More to the point, he jumps hip-deep into a musical cornfield so stale, he's acting like The Band is still on the cover of Time magazine. Maybe Adams is just confused about where he is and what he's doing. I mean, how clueless does one have to be to write a country-pop song and call it "New York, New York"? This guy sounds like David Grey with cowshit stuck to his shoes. Shows you that 2001 was one horrible year for pop music that this guy was touted as one of the up-and-comers; all the label execs probably thought we were all going to hell anyway, with file sharing threatening to drive everyone into bankruptcy. Then 9-11 happened, and two weeks later the "Gold" CD hits the stores. I can totally imagine how it all must have played out: "Fuck it, let's just release the goddamn thing. Not like anything matters anymore, anyway." So they put an American flag on the cover to hook insecure Americans into buying it, but then everybody brought the album home and thought to themselves, "Hey -- isn't the 'Summer of '69' guy originally from Canada?"

Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble "Couldn't Stand the Weather" [1984]

About the only guy in the world who could make a blistering guitar solo sound boring, cowboy-hatted shit-kicker Stevie Ray Vaughan rose to fame and (some) fortune riffing Hendrix via Robin Trower via the nondescript roadhouse outside West Bufu Egypt. Being a Texan, Stevie Ray clearly had no concept of "less is more;" he sounds like he's attempting the Guinness Book world's record for most notes from a Stratoscaster through a tube amp on one LP performed by someone not named Van Halen. (With any luck, he'd get the page opposite the two obese biker brothers; I assume they're both dead, but if not they're probably big Stevie Ray fans.) On "Couldn't Stand the Weather," Stevie Ray's second album, he proceeds to prematurely jump the shark by actually covering Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile," demonstrating why he's really nothing more than a competent guitar instructor with a permanent chubby for Jimi (hey -- "Chubby for Jimi" should have been the title of this album). Stevie Ray apologists would probably say he sounds nothing like Jimi because he uses a tremolo setting; true enough -- Hendrix wouldn't have been caught dead (and wasn't) playing something so wimpy and out of date. And all this before discussing Stevie Ray's cow-patty of a voice; even George Thorogood didn't sound like this much of a redneck grease monkey. Ultimately, if you're a Jimmy Buffett fan in the mood for BBQ, try this on. Otherwise, just listen to the real blues guitar players -- they need your money more, anyway.

Run DMC "King Of Rock" [1985]

Had actual rock music been this two-dimensional and obnoxious, there's no way it could have ever survived the 50s. With programmed hip-hop beats put together by the kid from Special Ed in the drum class made even worse by guitar-work provided by Ray Parker Jr. on crazy pills and synth patches from The Gap Band's keyboard player with brain damage, Run DMC's "King Of Rock" is a hideously transparent attempt a cross-over between the urban rap music crowd and true rock fans. But even most of those suburban idiots who listened to the Scorpions were beyond a kindergarten-level understanding of rhythm and lyrical content. Shoot, Run DMC make Sam & Dave seem like college professors. For those who were duped by this naked grab at the lowest common denominator, they'd eventually have found out Run DMC had even sold street hoods short, as if nobody on the corner could play the dozens faster than 120 beats per minute (BTW, even the stupid ones can). Typical of New Yorkers, however, the self-identified street-smartest people in America are suckers for anything so unapologetically Noo Yawk (see: Joel, Billy -- the catalog of); thus, they wound up selling themselves short, too. So anyone outside the five boroughs must be forgiven for thinking the whole city had gone retarded around the time Run DMC hit the scene… at least until the Beastie Boys showed up, when they knew for sure.

Jimi Hendrix Experience "Are You Experienced?" [1967]

I'm sure white people of the 60s knew it was only a matter of time before black dudes were going to try to take over in the wake of the Civil Rights movement. On the Jimi Hendrix Experience's debut "Are You Experienced?" a full-on assault of all things decent was launched by an out of-control afro-wearing trip-head who played his guitar backwards. When the Southern politically-elected bumfucks warned everybody about "nigra music," this must have been their worst nightmare -- especially seeing that Hendrix had two white co-conspirators (good thing they were English, at least). In retrospect, "Are You Experienced?" sounds accurately like a guy falling apart piece by piece, starting with whatever constituted his brain before he turned it to mush with noise volume and hallucinogens. Even worse, it spawned scores of white imitators for the next several decades, all of whom tried to dismantle themselves just as Hendrix did, signifying the biggest onslaught of self-destruction this side of reporting to the draft board to be sent to Vietnam. So if you find this collection of dashed-off tracks -- more haphazardly thrown-together than Hendrix's ridiculous thrift-store clothes -- worthy of its long-standing lofty status in the rock music lexicon, the question stands: why you trippin'?

Cat Power "Sun" [2012]

Not content to continue releasing barren, cheap, demo-quality albums sounding like some cut-rate Nora Jones with a hangover (or Sinead O'Connor pretty much every morning), Cat Power apparently happened upon the same realization/crisis Yeah Yeah Yeahs did a few years earlier: "You ain't getting any cuter, and you sure as hell ain't getting any richer." Enter the blatant overproduction qualities of "Sun" -- her, like, 25th album or something -- to help her keep from working the register at Target for a few more years. Sensing an opportunity that likely stemmed from her understanding that she's hotter than Adele (yeah, and she's a better singer than Liz Phair, but so's a crippled parrot), Cat Power went all gooey with reverb and endless channels as if she's trying to lure MGMT into her apartment. Too bad she still can't write any interesting songs; if you listen closely you can hear Arcade Fire complaining how repetitious all the tunes on "Sun" are. Thus, reminiscent of the way Flaming Lips suck as a rock band and as an electronic one, Cat Power proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she's fortunate to have moved up from Open Mic Night at all.

Chicago "Chicago II" [1970]

With all the Midwestern sentiment it would require to name your albums like Super Bowls and play fake jazz-blues-pop like they do on an off-night at a Rush Street dump, Chicago split their home town to strike it rich in California, and somehow it worked. ("Somehow" Blood, Sweat & Tears and Englebert Humperdinck also had record deals in the late 60's, so go figure.) Giving Steely Dan the preposterous and totally unwarranted notion that wanking off with jazz riffs and far too many horns was a good idea, an entire faction of 70s music -- which might well have one day rescued us all from "Hotel California" -- instead merely set us up for the kill. Those who tried to genuinely recover grasped for Jeff Beck and Weather Report, but it was already too late: Chicago's mob of sessionist pinheads not only scored hit singles on a regular basis (call them the "Charting Chart-readers"), they inexcusably released double albums of off-timed, endless suites of brass pomp. Thus the disease of overproduction (and the resulting mere approximation of actual rock music) had infected the industry to an alarming degree, thanks to these chumps. Imagine Stephen Stills trying to conduct an all-white Crusaders cover band arranged by a composer deranged by overmodulation, and you'll get a good (i.e. horribly bad) idea of what "Chicago II" sounds like.

Elliott Smith "Either/Or" [1997]

I think it was downright cruel that nobody bothered telling Elliott Smith that Simon & Garfunkel hadn't been cool for decades, if they ever were cool at all. His "breakthrough" 1997 effort -- if "breakthrough" is something you can call a group of songs that don't "drive" so much as "waft" -- reeks of acoustic 60s sentiment: the Byrds in slow-motion, or the vague apparition of Thunderclap Newman. Except in the 60s people tended to have a positive outlook, even with the Vietnam War devouring everyone's classmates and sending the chickenshits off to Canada; in the 90s there was nothing but peace and prosperity, but all singer/songwriters like Smith could manage to write were acoustic funeral dirges about how lame they are. Not that he wasn't accurate about it -- this was one homely dude (even he couldn't have been shocked by his seemingly constant ill-treatment from chicks); what it proves is that glum kids from the 90s could still get off with a little Schadenfreude. Either that or they just enjoyed bumming themselves out, which was pretty easy to do with this guy who could scarcely be bothered to bring his singing voice louder than a warbly whisper. I guess it makes more sense than permanently covering yourself in tattoos like they do nowadays, though; you can always get happy again after you stop listening to weakling mopes like Elliott Smith.

Kings of Leon "Only By the Night" [2008]

Well, they scrubbed these guys up and tried to make them presentable, but some folk just don't wash up good. Kings of Leon started off a bunch of family hicks from God-knows-where, and were somehow plucked from obscurity by the music industry, probably 'cause they knew they'd work cheap. Lo and behold, a few years and a couple good album reviews later, they're given really expensive haircuts like they're the weed-smoking version of the Jonas Brothers. Didn't help out their music -- shockingly, of course. If anything, softening their approach just made them sound more clueless on "Only By the Night," like an Adam Duritz solo album performed shortly after Jennifer Aniston kicked him in the skull. What Kings of Leon wouldn't have done to endure such pain! What this band's newly found handlers and presenters should have done is get singer Colin Followill to stop singing like his mouth is full of marbles. And would it have killed them to put down the Allman Brothers records every once in awhile? Far too often his singing style is reminiscent of a young Bruce Springsteen... in a dunce-cap. Basically, what doomed "Only By the Night" is all the armless shirts and hair putty in the world wasn't going to make these 20-somethings not sound like washed-up old farts. A cautionary tale for all A&R reps out there.

The Human League "Dare" [1981]

Notorious as the album Lester Bangs listened to when he kicked the bucket -- that guy was on borrowed time anyway, barely kept alive from the sugar in all that cough syrup -- but The Human League's "Dare" certainly didn't help. Whether he was trying to determine at the time if Linda McCartney was responsible for the amateur single-key synth-playing on this album will never be known for sure. At first I thought it was a joke to call something a "league" that mostly seems consists of one moron with a keyboard and a drum machine, let alone a "human" one -- but it's not. What sounds like it must have been recorded by the LCD Soundsystem guy's depraved British uncle, sounding like a strained Lene Lovich demo tape sung by a guy in a dress, is really a full band's effort following several lineup changes and commercial failures. In short, it took a lot of untalented people to come up with something so flat and barren. "Dare" does live up to its billing: it "dares," alright -- dares to suck walnuts from the uncracked shell, and here it succeeds. You know it's a bad sign when you start trying to pinpoint the exact moment Bangs must have croaked while listening to this album, but it's honestly so hard to determine with so much same-sounding two-dimensional crapola. Suffice it to say The Human League paved the way for Yaz, Howard Jones and countless other synth-wankers, and as a result, I'm now in favor of the death penalty.

Rolling Stones "Let It Bleed" [1969]

What the fuck were we thinking in 1969? It was supposed to be a youth-centered Utopia of ditching square boundaries and digging each others' scenes. Instead, we got Charlie Manson and these fucking twats. "Let It Bleed" continues the most hideous parade in history, complete with drug-zombies, floating corpses, fame-leeches, diseased groupies, road managers and other scum-sucking vermin. Musically, the Stones delve deeper into bastardizing the blues on a nod when they're not provoking rapists and killers to start getting busy, without so much as a blink of an eye for founding member Brian Jones, who'd just fucking croaked. Forget Led Zeppelin -- the Stones were honestly summoning all things evil to come take shit over. Y'know, just like they did. "Bad guys win," is basically what Mick Jagger is telling everyone in between wiping the pussy juice off his fat lips. And then they have the audacity to be surprised when Altamont happened -- exactly one day after "Let It Bleed" was released. C'mon, you limey circus freaks -- even wasted as you guys are, it should be apparent that you're a walking shitstorm. And Stones fans must finally admit they're fucking morons to think they might get a piece of this action, and wouldn't remember anything that happened even if they got it.

Of Monsters and Men "My Head is an Animal" [2011]

The only logical explanation how Of Monsters and Men got signed is that Bjork must have babysat them. Otherwise, this overblown pajama party of chubby Icelandikes would most likely have stayed local, with Edward Snowden the only American to call ahead in order to get on the guest list. Apparently, beard-rock has made it to even the most obscure realms of Europe, however, as Of Monsters and Men clearly attest: "My Head is an Animal" is paint-by-numbers overdub-abused campfire music with a grown-ass woman singing like she's a little girl, as if the Cranberries decided to slum it in Iceland and write some songs with soccer chants in them. The overall effect is flabby, unflattering and pretty gross, with the insistent, repetitive, childlike sing-songy melodies clinging like so much hickory smoke in your dirty hair. The 20-teens aren't shaping up very well for the music industry; perhaps the protruding beer bellies of these pastey-white half-eskimos are a pretty accurate image describing where popular music is in 2011 -- the result of overindulgence, laziness and the palate of a kindergartener. And they can be exercised away with enough diligence and focus, because they aren't at all healthy, and they sure aren't attractive.

INXS "Kick" [1987]

Not sure what the big idea was -- consciously making a straight-up pop band like INXS as moronically vacuous as your average hair-metal group of the day, but it must have had something to do with the perpetual "lowest common denominator" philosophy of major record labels. INXS had it all, on the surface -- the winner of the Jim Morrison lookalike contest, backed by a bunch of yuppified weenies who wouldn't dare steal his spotlight, ripped off Prince synths and Hall & Oates saxes -- but underneath was as purely empty as the stock market bubble that crashed, curiously, the exact week "Kick" was released. With processed rock so flagrant it'd make Billy Idol blush, INXS had sure come a long way from their flop of a career as a failed white Australian ska band. They then became perhaps the most popular group to drink wine coolers to, and left the same sickly sweet aftertaste as well. In retrospect, it's like they were daring grunge music to come "kick" their ass, though INXS did get to bask in their own stench of success long enough to foster drug addiction and give Depeche Mode its entire blueprint for a comeback a few years later. Revisiting this album after so long makes it crystal clear the 80s were paying for their various purges throughout the decade and feeling quite ill by this time; remember watching Reagan testify he knew nothing about Iran-Contra? Yeah -- this album gives you the same queasy feeling.

The Damned "Damned Damned Damned" [1977]

These repulsive cretins (I know, I know -- punk rockers like being referred to that way) are often cited as having preceded the Sex Pistols on the UK charts. Great, so we've been blaming the wrong shitheads this whole time. A walking nightmare of rock music's seedy underbelly, "Damned Damned Damned" became the perfect album for Jimmy Page to have a nervous breakdown to. The Damned demonstrate all the nutritional value of a smashed watermelon and play like Chuck Berry's illegitimate white children on an amphetamine IV drip. The guitar effect was apparently set on "insect," and it's likely this album's producer/chump popster Nick Lowe was trying to sabotage the entire operation before Stiff Records could release this pile of vomit. Perhaps you'd enjoy other aspects of the obnoxious early punk movement (and I do mean "movement" -- these people took a big, steaming doodie over everything) like getting punched in the face by one of their jackbooted morons at the front of the stage or smell their collective breath of rotten teeth. Face it, punk is a disgrace and you're a disgrace for liking it. The only good thing about the genre, this album and The Damned themselves is they're the musical equivalent of a car going 100 miles per hour straight into a brick wall -- it's bound to be over pretty fucking quick.

Seal ("Seal II") [1994]

Following in the footsteps of fellow Brit-popster douchebag Peter Gabriel, the guy who lets himself be called Seal didn't bother naming his second album release, which came after his inexplicable freak hit "Crazy" from his debut (called "Crazy" because it was crazy-overproduced). Perhaps the most inexcusably coddled pop singer of the 90s, Seal caught all the breaks right away -- no kicking around London pubs scrounging low-paying gigs for him, he was instantly lavished with infinitely expensed studio time and all the muscle of a major-label push on at least two major continents. Makes me think he must know where his label exec buried the dead hooker. Endlessly overbaked by Trevor Horn, the producer who turned 70s prog-wankers Yes into 80s teeny-bopper fodder, "Seal II" is egregiously ornate as it is sentimentally maudlin. In short, exactly what shallow people who don't really like music buy up in droves. Seal couldn't have been more divorced from either the grunge or hip-hop aesthetics of the day if he tried, and still he wound up world famous. In fact, this guy was Wayne Brady before Wayne Brady was. Perhaps in the world of major label pop corporatism this makes perfect sense; all I can do is shake my head and contemplate the horsehoe stuck in this propped-up minor talent's ass.

The Beatles ("White Album") [1968]

So if "Sgt Pepper" was the beginning of the end, the pretentiously-unnamed double-album follow-up (not including the wretched "Magical Mystery Tour"), known as "The White Album" (I'll say it's white -- you can't dance to anything on here!), was when the wheels really started coming off for the Beatles. Collaboration was now officially a thing of the past, and Ringo quitting temporarily led to a massive flower purchase that cut into Yoko's future bereavement fund. George Harrison doesn't even bother sticking with just the guitar players in his own band, and his laconic grooves make his songs seem so freaking long by this point, that tight leash kept on him finally makes sense. John, meanwhile, finally ends the pretense that his drug of choice was something other than skag. And Paul is still hopelessly, inexplicably buried in his collection of 10" vinyl and soft-soap chickie-babe come-ons. The White Album is really a sad listen; these guys can't even rock out anymore unless there's some sort of gimmick. And all this before discussing the failed art experiment freakout of "Revolution #9," the most egregious example of song filler ever committed to vinyl. Looking for proof the 60's were overrated? It's all right here, folks.

Fall Out Boy "From Under the Cork Tree" [2005]

How do you know heavy metal is over as a viable music form? When spoiled Midwestern rich kids from the Aughts get in on the act. Thanks a lot, Queens of the Stone Age -- you gave all these guys hope they never should have had. Fall Out Boy's "From Under the Cork Tree" is the soundtrack from that ill-advised road trip you took with those baseball-hatted morons that felt like would never end. Partly that's because their pot was pretty primo, but what a shame to waste a good high on false emotion and processed guitar impact. Far from avoiding the abysmal Mutt Lange techniques imparted on 80s faux-metal assheads like Def Leppard, bands like Fall Out Boy -- or, to be clear, their record company reps (likely friends of one of their uncle's) -- actually embraced them. Everything Green Day is embarrassed about in their own major-label work is actually considered a virtue by Fall Out Boy. And they're well-studied on the styles they ape and capitalize on -- there are even elements of 90s grunge sell-outs the Lemonheads here. Why they're not doing duets with Rhianna these days or opening for Cirque de Soleil in Vegas I can only guess. Perhaps they finally realized the same thing I did halfway through the first song on this album: Fall Out Boy should just be tucked back in; hopefully no one will comment on what just happened here.

Hall & Oates "H2O" [1982]

Wondering where George Michael got all his shitty production ideas from (that didn't come from the Bee Gees)? You are here. In a successful quest to prove "white soul" is a hopeless oxymoron, weasel-faced singer Daryl Hall and gross mustachioed wingman John Oates make the scrubbed-up Motown sound seem like blues night at the rib shack. Elsewhere they bastardize Prince's vinegar-douched funk programs and gave INXS the horrible idea that they might have a lucrative career doing the same thing. Having been around so long before "H2O" came out, Ball & Scroates somehow managed to morph from a less-dickheaded version of Todd Rundgren to a more-dickheaded version of Robert Palmer. I guess crime pays, as they say. Ultimately, it comes down to this: bad as it is for these guys to update their 70s AM-radio conceits with the shallow synth-washes of 80s pop and Flock of Seagulls hair, the cribbing of Gap Band chorus riffs is just scraping the barrel of patheticness. Nobody was playing these guys at the Frederick Douglass High prom. Suit yourself if you'd like to revisit your crunchy-haired high school days, but I'm warning you: "H2O" holds up about as well as those pleated slacks with the white logo patch on the zipper.

Journey "Infinity" [1978]

Forget "corporate rock" -- this group of mostly ex-Santana sell-outs brought "prom rock" front and center in the late 70's, where they'd rule the roost for the better part of an excruciatingly long decade. The pastel-colored voice of band-newcomer Steve Perry set the table nicely -- horrendously is what I mean -- for REO Speedwagon and other suburban douchebag musical corporatists to wreak havoc on Middle American FM radio like a plague of boll weevils before the harvest. Between Perry and the soulless chart-reading harmonies of Gregg Rolie and these other session-level hacks -- with the gall to, at the same time, try to fake actual hard rock -- Journey clearly sought "Aerosmith with singing talent" but they kept coming up "Boston, but even worse." Apparently the schmucks who once played Woodstock with their frontman tripping his balls off were by now angling to stop sleeping on the tour bus and cash-in upon the same beast that somehow made Rush and Foreigner relevant. Rockers were transparently shitting themselves over disco's ongoing blitzkrieg, with only Kiss smart enough to get themselves signed onto Casablanca. These were dark times, indeed. That said, as bad as "Infinity" is -- and I'm guessing this is the dollar figure their management company told them they'd earn for releasing such dreck -- Journey, and especially Perry, were just getting started. These calculated, long-haired pinheads began a blitzkrieg of their own, and took down the entire 80s with it.

Daft Punk "Human After All" [2005]

You've got to be fucking kidding me. "Human," based on what criteria? This is Depeche Mode as a software program, set through a sonic filter I'm guessing is called "farting duck." Horrid, horrible shit -- if the Millennials weren't so goddamned stupid they'd realize their entire generation was being completely ripped off by anti-talented mongrels like Daft Punk. The name of this band should really be Frogs on X, and the album entitled "Frogs on X Dick Around on a Computer." About the only thing Daft Punk and actual punk music have in common, by the way, is that they both display a talent level just below "licking goat testicles." Just adding sub-woofer beats to everything is not the same thing as having a groove, but now there are going to be millions of white kids living the rest of their lives thinking dance music is more or less the maddeningly repetitive soundtrack of an average video game. These things are probably connected, come to think of it -- something along the lines of life-long corporate brainwashing, wherein generations later we learn of the devious plot perpetuated by the makers of Red Bull, tattoo ink, "stretch-piercing" (or whatever it's called) and these ass-hats. It would make a lot more sense if these guys weren't from France, however; perhaps this was intentional so as to throw off the scent of the massive conspiracy. That fucking Dick Cheney thought of everything, didn't he?

Stone Temple Pilots "Purple" [1994]

Just in case Pearl Jam didn't drive home this point strongly enough (in fact, they did -- it was the only thing of strength they ever managed), the 90s was the decade when hard rock put on the Fonzie jacket and the water skis. Pointless, meandering guitar progressions fronted by a constipated Ragstock model, STP epitomized everything about the era worth taking a big piss on. Tortured-dinosaur effects pedals do not connote playing guitar with feeling, though that was clearly not the point of this genre, especially among major-label douchebags like these guys. What STP was interested in was keeping the wool pulled over everyone's eyes to the fact that grunge was just dressed-down cock-rock until they all became millionaires. Straddling the fence between the dual sonic septic tanks of Collective Soul and The Offspring, "Purple" demonstrates ultimate poseur lead singer Weiland knows he can still sound like total shit without aping Eddie Vedder. Adding insult to injury, apparently not satisfied merely with the cookie-cutter approach of 80s metal without the blow-dryers and constituting the 70s rock album method of cramming the musical contents with horrid filler, STP even tries to pull off off-time 60s tabla garbage, to unintentionally hilarious effect. In short, STP set out to be everything grunge was supposed to be against; but the joke's on us. Had we any brains back in the day, we'd have bought these guys a one-way ticket to Palookaville, where they belong.

Nick Drake "Pink Moon" [1972]

Proof that in the late 60s record companies knew so little about what the music-buying public was interested in they signed virtually everybody, painfully shy wallflower Nick Drake wound up on Island Records, even though he was the sort of mouse-quiet introvert who usually puts people to sleep at Open Mic Night. But by the time of "Pink Moon," even his label was clearly sick of the kid, now unwilling to pay for any extra musicians, such as the ones who ruined Drake's previous album with vomitously ornate 60s studio orchestrations. Even by himself, Drake proves he can't cut the mustard; he was basically already an old fart by the age of 24. Thus, his depressed folkie washout act may have been a true reflection of who he was, but why anyone thought it'd be able to sell any records is a riddle for the ages, with the ultimate answer likely revolving somewhere around the early 70s' ridiculously high drug usage. Regardless, Nick Drake was a flop throughout his career, only finding success posthumously in the 90s when it became stylish for young people to mope around and do nothing all day. "Pink Moon" was thus considered some sort of triumph -- clearly the wrong word for it -- among sad white slackers with college educations and no ambitions. They'd probably have built a commemorative statue in Drake's honor, had anyone bothered putting forth the necessary effort.

The Fall "This Nation's Saving Grace" [1985]

Ever notice that there's only ever one effort by The Fall listed among the supposed "great accomplishments" of 80s music? The Fall have like 95 albums and they're all intolerably bad. So what's with "This Nation's Saving Grace" -- did Mark E. Smith suddenly learn how to carry a tune? Hell fucking no; this may be the only vocalist in history who is literally tone-deaf. Did their distorted rhythm section finally take some goddamn lessons and not sound like poseur junkie losers who can't keep time? Nuh-uh. Does this band lay off the meth and glue-sniffing long enough to not drive every frickin' riff they hatch right over the frickin' cliff? They most certainly do not. The fact is, "This Nation's Saving Grace" sounds exactly like every one of The Fall's other 94 albums, give or take a few changed band-members taking the same terrible direction from Smith. Maybe it's that the one potentially commercial moment for this band in its insanely long existence nowhere relevant came in the form of something called "Cruisers Creek." But you've never heard this song on the radio, admit it. So I propose what those feckless, lazy asshole critics from Rolling Stone and elsewhere do is admit they really never listened to "This Nation's Saving Grace" and only included it because they're all lemmings cheating off each others' papers, and once upon a time Spin hired an actual fan of this band full of cretins. They won't suffer a blow to their integrity; I predict no one will care at all.

The National "Boxer" [2007]

Somehow these Middle-American schmucks thought they'd get one up on the similarly overly-referential Interpol by pretending to act British, the way clueless, horny idiots from Ohio usually do when they're hitting on MILFs at the singles bar. And even though the use of gloomy cellos hadn't worked for Smashing Pumpkins back in the 90s, here The National employ them again, to similar avoidably dour effect, like visiting Portland, OR when you really don't have to. I think The National is going for what R.E.M. might have sounded like had they not completely sold out, but if "Boxer" is an accurate depiction of that, then R.E.M. was better off having taken the money. That said, these guys get so depressed as this album progresses it's hard to believe they're not actually from Seattle. Vocalist Carin Besser must have earlier struck out badly with the MILFs, because he veers downward in a hurry to approach something like Mark Lanegan on sad pills. And with how often The National seems to be bent on re-doing The Killers as if they're Joy Division, they really should have called this album "Mr. Darkside." Hey, at least it would have sold better, with all the Star Wars geeks and sports-bar doofuses suddenly interested.