The Decemberists "The Crane Wife" [2006]

I know it wouldn't be nice to describe The Decemberists' "The Crane Wife" as sounding like Green Day on their period, but I honestly don't think anyone has every described this album's sound more accurately or succinctly. This Portland-based group of post-collegiate stoners -- I know most of this may be redundant -- touch down on every folk-rock conceit from every rainy backwoods country; they're lucky that affecting the occasional fake Irish brogue hasn't gotten their ass kicked yet... by Neko Case. But it's likely most people tougher than The Decemberists -- shit, who does that leave out? -- haven't ever heard this, anyway; Irish music, in particular, is probably quite unlikely to approximate jig-fiddle music with synthesizers used by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, or at least it has for about the last 40 years. The rain-soaked barn in which "The Crane Wife" was no doubt recorded seems like one murky, sad place; this album makes fellow glum Portlanders The Shins sound like Madonna. They do rock harder than Belle and Sebastian when they want to, but that's like saying they take fewer steroids than Lance Armstrong. And even where the male-female harmonies seem to want to inflect a gaggle of geese soaring through the air migrating toward nicer climes, ultimately all The Decemberists can manage is the affect of hundreds of goose turds all the way around the pond.

Humble Pie "Smokin'" [1972]

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Steve Marriott's singing style was a mean-spirited parody of lowlife white druggies aping the stylings of black soul singers, like he's lampooning Janis Joplin or Robert Plant at their respective Dean Martin Roasts. But no -- he's for real, and on "Smokin'" he gets even worse: instead of just pretending to be a fiery black gospel dude, he actually brings real ones into the studio with him. Even Peter Frampton couldn't fucking stand it any longer (and with all the shit he was to foist onto an unsuspecting listening public in the next few years, that's pretty remarkable). But Humble Pie's milieu remains intact here, however unfortunately: dragging tired blues covers across the bong-water-soaked floors of the recording studio while Marriott shamelessly wails over the top like he's the runt twin of Joe Cocker. And even after years of this band egregiously murdelyzing any tune that stands in their way with the same sledgehammer-meathead approach, they really outdo themselves on this album; by the end of the first four tracks, one becomes indignant that neither rock-soul wailing nor the wah-wah pedal has yet been banned from existence. Imagine if everyone in the Stones catered to every last one of Keith Richards' worst instincts -- that's this album. And you might think that sounds delightful, but I guarantee you it's the musical equivalent of narcotic smoke and chicken grease B.O., and it will suffocate you with the nastiest pair of aural ass-cheeks ever.

U2 "Achtung Baby" [1991]

Dusting themselves off after collapsing from the top-heavy pretentiousness that was "Rattle and Hum," U2 begins to set the table for new self-inflicted calamities in a new decade with their release of "Achtung Baby," putting the onus on other rock groups to issue each new CD with enough material to fill a double LP -- no matter how lame that material is. These self-proclaimed God-fearing rock gods give their insipid fan base the whole enchilada here: ready-made commercial jingles (you can't tell me "Even Better than the Real Thing" wasn't created by Pepsi's ad department), overt spiritual shamanism (yick -- is there anything less palatable from our rock stars?), recounting Jesus stories (um, yes -- yes there is) and echoey arena grandstanding designed to cause involuntary lighter-flicking. The rest is all filler -- aping formerly successful rockers like John Lennon, David Bowie, Echo & the Bunnymen... except only those guys when they were under heavy sedation. That the members of U2 seem to have remained relatively drug-free only makes this laconic execution all the more inexcusable. Perhaps U2 is just tired of all the bombast themselves. If so, it seems a helluva way to deal with it -- pumping out more and more, as if it'll expel from their collective body like so much spooge. I guess deep down, all rock stars really do think the same.

The Go-Go's "Beauty and the Beat" [1981]

If there ever was an ominous sign that American culture in the 1980s was about to do a decade-long face-plant, it's "Beauty and the Beat," the debut album from LA all-female group The Go-Go's. Immediately, this band strikes the rather sickening verve of The Cars as performed by the Brady Bunch girls. This is the contemporary music version of a pillow fight; essentially they're arresting their own development in order to turn a buck in the music biz. Wouldn't be the first time, but that's no excuse. Because they follow the dumbed-down blueprint of new wave -- bare-bones, jangly rock 'n roll -- The Go-Go's (with that annoying, ever-present possessive apostrophe) were able to get over as a more-feminine Cure with sunshine and rainbows shooting out their asses; they're the B-52s as Republicans. The industry by this time had gotten so good (i.e. "reprehensible") at exploiting the dipshit impulses of high school kids, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. And The Go-Go's themselves, even after predictably imploding after another record or so, nevertheless begat a goldmine just as the MTV blitzkrieg was getting underway: Madonna's annoying nasal vocal delivery comes straight from Belinda Carlisle, and the band's pedestrian vagina-rock gave birth to a Jewish version called The Bangles. Jesus, no wonder people actually considered Chrissie Hynde something special back in the day.

Richard Hell & the Voidoids "Blank Generation" [1977]

As far as monikers go, "Richard Hell" overrates himself; at best, he should be "Dick Purgatory." The only album he stayed competently sober enough to record, "Blank Generation," is a failed approximation of where punk rock music was headed -- overly fussed-over with extensive modulation and most definitely the only punk album ever to incorporate the word "perpetual" repeatedly in its lyric sheet. Likely because he was booted from fellow CBGB band of vermin Television, Hell scrambled to find the nearest thing he could to pinheaded musicians to fill the void(oids) until he settled on the misanthropic Robert Quine, among others. Then, instead of professing some sort of simplistic nihilism that might have been appropriate for the punk rock milieu, Hell opts to write tunes about premature ejaculation and mooching drinks off his groupies, exactly like the frontman of any Rod Stewart tribute band would. That he insists on singing in a vocal range exactly where his voice cracks unfortunately gave The Cure's Robert Smith the brilliant idea to do the same thing, and for that Hell loses even more coolness points. About the only thing that survives from "Blank Generation" is the self-deprecating view of himself and his fellow 20-something nobodies, but even there he gets it wrong: it became Generation X in another dozen years; even dipshits like Billy Idol got that much right.

John Mayer "Room for Squares" [2001]

Good God, not this. As unapologetically wonky as he is wanky, John Mayer's debut "Room for Squares" set the table for a whole group of new fey teeny-bopper molesters, as if they're the Birkenstock-wearing contingent of Mickey Mouse Club alumni. Next time you curse the fact you know who Jack Johnson or Jason Mraz are, blame this douchebag. Mayer could have enjoyed a perfectly soulless existence playing backup guitar on studio singles for Death Cab for Cutie, but no -- he had to put on his teddy-bear whisper and try to seduce every underage girl in American suburbia. If he were a black dude, he'd still be in prison. And, to be fair, recording "Room for Squares" the way he did (hey, nice title, BTW -- was "Dorksongs" already taken?) pretty much already played to his bland sessionist instincts, except he got paid more and got to bang all of Adam Duritz's female TV star leftovers. Even worse, Mayer branches out into fake yuppie stoner pop-disco, a la Dave Matthews Band; apparently college kids at the the turn of the Millennium hadn't been paying attention to how bad their parents' Sting and Seal CDs were sucking. In fact, if anything, Mayer probably was every bit as attractive to menopausal swim team coaches as he was to his Hello Kitty target market. It all makes so much sense in relation to Music Biz 101, but outside that, the only sense "Room for Squares" makes is in justifying Limp Bizkit's indecipherable rage.

The Who "Tommy" [1969]

Pete Townshend may be the biggest asshole in all of 60s rock, and that is really saying something. At the exit door to the 1960s music scene he left the biggest steaming dump of pretension anyone -- including the Beatles -- could possibly muster: the first "rock opera." So instead of allowing rock music to branch out naturally, independent of other previously discarded forms of music, this ugly bastard had to graft the arch, melodramatic, predictable and incredibly out-of-date opera form onto his and his band The Who's "Tommy." (They should have changed their band name to The Why right then and there.) You'd think Townshend could have spent all that time hashing out overtures and reprises learning a new way to play a tonic chord, or teach himself how to execute a fucking solo for once. But not Townshend -- he'd somehow ordained himself to make rock music "important"... with the narrative about some fictitious Helen Keller boy playing great pinball, defeating a wizard and becoming world famous. Geez -- so much for being taken seriously. Why his band members didn't pin Townshend down until he came to his senses none of us can know for sure, but probably he assured them "Tommy" would work. They even played it at Woodstock. And then -- voila! -- the era of Andrew Lloyd Weber was upon us! How Townshend's been able to live with himself with that on his conscience these past 40+ years I can't possibly fathom in the slightest.

Tracy Chapman "Tracy Chapman" [1988]

When the 60s counterculture was emphatically celebrated in the 80s by baby boomers being sold their youth via nostalgia, there were plenty of seriously terrible outcomes. Topping the list was the re-emergence of talentless hippie drug-addict hacks Grateful Dead, but not far behind was this idea that protest-folk rock could and should make a comeback. So A&R reps scoured coffee shops the nation over and emerged with Tracy Chapman, a sort of hybrid between Joan Armatrading and a nanny goat. They put her in the studio right away with an utterly boring group of session musicians; they let her ramble on with rhymeless "poetry" that comes off like reciting newspaper headlines from the Metro section when she's not advocating some vague and idealistic call to action. That was enough for both the boomers and their kids -- "Talking About a Revolution" is a helluva lot less messy than actually starting one. And like clockwork, Chapman soon found herself at the top of the charts. Faceless production qualities that can only manage to crib cheap tricks from Daniel Lanois and Peter Gabriel when they bother helping out her sound at all at all is the final piece to this incredibly cynical music industry puzzle. Shoot, if anybody knew Tracy Chapman wasn't really going to spearhead a new movement of leftist activism, it was the ghouls who signed her.

Tegan and Sara "Heartthrob" [2013]

Apparently what's emerging in the marketplace, much to my infinite dismay -- now that beard-rock is dissolving like so many hits in a vaporizer -- is former indie chicks cashing in their integrity for a shot at heavy rotation on Z-94. From Yeah Yeah Yeahs to The Kills to Cat Power, it's becoming pretty unavoidable that women can't simply exist forever sleeping in a smelly van with all their band equipment, and are willing to be confused with Miley Cyrus for the next couple years, at least until their crises of conscience makes them give up the game altogether. Taking this strategy to a truly horrendous level, cutesy-poo identical twins Tegan and Sara put their sugar-high harmonies to work in the service of "Heartthrob," where they actually employed Ke$ha's producer to make them sound like Wilson Phillips in an animated version of the kiddie board game Candyland. This is very dangerous stuff; if popsters currently seeing their soccer-chant singles flopping in the stadiums and on the charts decide they need to do what Tegan and Sara are doing, we could be in for a truly insufferable period where listening to modern pop could cause type-2 diabetes. Then again, Tegan and Sara never really belonged on the indie set anyway -- foreign pixies like them should never be relegated to sad college towns to hawk their wares. Thus, maybe they've found their true calling and can actually replace Miley Cyrus now that she's embarrassed herself beyond repair, whereby I can forget about them forever because I never watch The Disney Channel or Super Bowl halftime shows.

Bob Dylan "Blonde on Blonde" [1966]

If you're one of those people who considers the 1960s to have been actually kind of gross, lame and full of itself, you couldn't be more right. And perhaps nothing from that decade illustrates this with more pathetic uselessness than celebrated billy goat Bob Dylan's double album of absurdly long campfire ballads and blues ripoffs called "Blonde on Blonde." Just the fact that this propped-up, nasal-bleating folkie with a loose group of electric instrument-playing stoners surrounding him was so revered is in itself pretty gross and lame, and though this is largely the case with almost every one of Dylan's 700 albums, "Blonde on Blonde" is the exact place where he became a complete caricature of himself. Every comedian who can do even a half-assed Dylan impression cites this album directly, his voice drawn like a magnet to the saaame nooote evvvery siiiingle soooong. And all this without even mentioning he'd clearly abandoned his interest in Vietnam and the political cries of injustice that made Dylan famous in the first place, in favor of boring laments and vignettes about random chicks -- a typical rock star conceit. He does revisit his "Highway 61" dadaist narratives on occasion, and the fact that these come off as relatively refreshing (when they were insufferable on his previous album) heightens one's awareness just how sucky he is as a romantic crooner. Only suitable for playing ironically or for a 60s theme party.

Blink-182 "Enema of the State" [1999]

Even upon revisiting Blink-182's disastrous "Enema of the State," it's hard to fathom how many bad ideas could fit within the confines of a single CD. Pasteurized, trite, cloying and assheaded, Blink-182 plays an overtly, self-consciously faux-hilarious brand of "punk-pop," a sub-genre which can best be described as the aural equivalent of McDonalds french fries: cheap, disgusting, fake and popular only if you're an immature, two-dimensional piece of shit. There were obviously plenty of such people around in 1999, and "Enema of the State" gave them every stupid, overreaching joke and idiotic vignette about girls they could cram up their collective butthole. Fuckin' a -- even Cake never reached this level of supreme punny preciousness. Which would be bad enough had they not sterilized the production throughout like they're performing in their mom's glowing white kitchen. Blink-182 are thus indeed committing pranks, just different ones than were clearly intended. Far from the intelligent insolence they think they're purveying, these guys engage in the criminal act of playing their instruments with anally-retentive precision but absolutely no heart, using cutesy phrases that are the very definition of banal; they're phony, insecure poseurs with a flat and trite worldview injecting aggressive mediocrity into the pop marketplace. In retrospect, we Americans were totally asking to get fucked with at the turn of the new millennium by listening to these guys.

Big Star "#1 Record" [1972]

There are plenty of stories throughout rock 'n roll history of a great band and/or album that somehow gets inexplicably overlooked by the music-buying public of its day. Big Star's "#1 Record" is not one of them. In fact, with this album, it's exceptionally easy to see why it failed: sounding like a demo reel from a post-Ron Wood Rod Stewart backup band with singer Alex Chilton switching from the pedestrian stylings of Keith Carradine to the helium-register of The Sweet and other groups that made the 70s completely unbearable, "#1 Record" was sunk before it ever got launched. Ripping off Beatles sections so nakedly you can hear Todd Rundgren taking out a hit on these guys, a good example of how unsuccessful this record was is when "In the Street" became the theme song for "That 70s Show" and absolutely nobody recognized it. Big Star rocks as obviously and amateurishly as T. Rex, but without any of the mystique. That anyone could prefer a curly haired munchkin who sings songs about cars and fairies over these guys ought to tell you how badly you'd have to go slumming it out behind the gas station in a working class rustbelt state like Ohio or somewhere to get on the same level as this record. Big Star and Chilton did enjoy a bit of success beyond Fox primetime TV when wise-ass Gen-Xers got into irony: both calling themselves Big Star and naming their album "#1 Record" has got this in droves.

Mastodon "Crack the Skye" [2009]

There's a perfectly good reason mastodons went extinct: lumbering aimlessly across the prehistoric plains with no capability to modernize themselves and without brains enough to thrive amid a changing landscape, they died off despite their gigantic size and obnoxious loud noises. As such, the term is a perfect moniker for the band Mastodon, a throwback metal band that cops every tired riff from Metallica, Black Sabbath, Jane's Addiction, et. al. and throws them haphazardly into a big, stinking heap. Taking matters even farther removed from good taste, on "Crack the Skye" Mastodon attempts, for some reason, to tell the story of a quadriplegic being sent back to the days of Rasputin in old Russia, or some such shit. Goddamn -- if they didn't already look enough like 70s wonk rockers Kansas, now they're busting out the junior high lit too? They could have skipped the pretense and simply featured a giant pair of hairy testicles for the cover art -- it would have sold pretty much the exact amount of units to women as it did in its original form. But perhaps such an aggressively stupid narrative was what the band felt it needed to set it apart from literally every rip-off metal band that ever played an all-ages show over the past 40 years. But even if you're OK with unoriginal riffs and hollers because the only thing you're concerned with is "rocking out," you could still no doubt do better than "Crack the Skye." I mean, really -- a quadriplegic? Fucking Rasputin? WTF?

Grizzly Bear "Veckatimest" [2009]

Ultimately, the 20th century is responsible for dissonance claiming a place within the musical experience; before then, people played by rules. Had any of those feckless shitheads the slightest inclination what might eventually happen with all the wrong-changing keys and melody lines that are absurdly off being allowed to exist without apology, they might have feared what came to pass with Grizzly Bear's monstrous mutant of a D-minus music skills collection called "Veckatimest" -- an unapproachably opaque ball of echo and pretension that sounds like Arcade Fire after being hit in the head with a baseball bat. Directly from the school of "what the hell is a four-track, anyway?," these cozy East Coast homeschoolers pitch every half-assed and overworked idea that passes through their stoner brains as if by sheer volume of insipidity they'd have something approaching an actual musical statement. They were wrong, but it's no shocker why once you've subjected yourself to even the first few minutes of this aural approximation of David Crosby's vomit. True, they don't stink up the joint as badly as Flaming Lips do, but that's like suggesting someone is less obnoxious than Gilbert Gottfried. The best way to describe this pile of musical schmutz is by following this recipe: deep-fry Radiohead, then leave the contents in the back of the refrigerator long enough for a gross blue fuzz to grow over the surface. Is anyone going to suggest to Grizzly Bear that there is such a thing as too much hydroponic weed, or do I have to do it?

Brian Eno & David Byrne "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" [1981]

It's amazing to think that with how obnoxious this album of actual tape loops is that the practice of loop sampling ever got off the ground. Brian Eno seems to have completely ruined the entire concept on his worthless experiments heaped together and called "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts." Joined by lead Talking (dick)Head David Byrne in his "one step away from wearing an afro with a chin-strap" phase, this high-brow duo from the New York art/music scene of the early 80s made for some incredibly high-octane douchebaggery. They exploited everything they could find that they deemed below their own self-worth -- radio conservatives, Muslim calls to prayers, evangelist huckster broadcasts, an actual exorcism, etc. -- and session-wanked their way through constructing actual "songs" around them. The vaguely dance-oriented repetition beneath the featured banalities sounds pretty much exactly like an aerobics tape for crazy people. For the rest of us, though, this album presents a heavy conundrum: what the fuck are you supposed to do while listening to this? You can't clean your house to it, you can't take drugs to it unless your idea is to be completely disoriented, you can't play it at a party unless you want everyone to leave, and you can't present it to an ethnic studies class without being chewed out over its various examples of abuse. Why Sire Records put it out is a complete mystery, unless they were hoping for a quiet implosion of their entire company akin to setting the office building on fire and collecting the insurance money.

Joy Division "Closer" [1980]

I'd say these were the guys who gave "post punk" a bad name, but come on -- the moniker sucks donkey nuts in the first place. Anyway, not merely content to display their own pathetic morbidity for the world to see, Joy Division was the type of band that wanted to drag you down with them -- within the first minutes of their second and final album during their existence, "Closer," (as in "shut the book" not "get nearer") it's quite easy to hear you're dealing with an entirely different level of asshole. Morosely depressed lead singer Ian Curtis sheds the unintentionally comic Muppet/serial killer voice for something even uglier and more warbly, as if he's attempting to aurally induce nausea and disorientation among his listening audience. That he comes close to succeeding is quite beside the point -- why would anyone allow themselves to endure such disgusting, wretched doom? Why, in fact, would a record label even sign these guys if not based on pure, naked misanthropy? Was "despair" the new "black" in 1980? Not like the rest of Joy Division are a barrel of laughs, either -- this album of simplistic, reverb-heavy repetition sounds like it was recorded in the boiler room of a haunted house. That Curtis hanged himself shortly before the release of "Closer" is the icing on the cake; this guy was basically Jim Jones and "Closer" is his poison kool-aid. Follow this dangerous sad-sack down to Guyana at your own peril.

The Beatles "Rubber Soul" [1965]

Even before "Sgt Pepper's" and all their ridiculously self-aware and spaced-out crap that followed (turning "rock star" into a decidedly negative term in the process), the Beatles -- especially John Lennon -- were already busy poisoning the well of 60s American society as early as "Rubber Soul," the frumpy-covered sour grapes lament that marked the band's descent from popping pre-gig uppers to smoking weed in their pretentious English country estates. Not that American culture didn't deserve to be taken down a peg, but the only reason these limeys got to do it was because they'd already suckered everyone into buying their "lovable mop-top" schtick. What a way to stab Ed Sullivan in the back! As for Paul McCartney, his main crime here is as an obsessive overdubbing creep and showoff, taxing George Martin clearly well past his capabilities, to say nothing of that poor four-track. Basically, had Beatlemaniacs not been so hysterical and greedy in their determination to grab a piece of these guys' hides, the band wouldn't have been allowed to sit back with all this extra time on their hands to preciously craft their overtly sappy harmonies like so many pieces of dollhouse furniture. Nor would Lennon have so completely been able to concoct his mean-spirited selfishness into an actual musical identity... that is, before he told us we all need to love each other. Psshhh -- what a frickin' phony.

Graham Parker & the Rumour "Squeezing Out Sparks" [1979]

Much the way Bob Dylan got booed for going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in '65, so too do I boo the grafting of Dylanesque wordiness and multi-verse hell into the still-nebulous era of new wave that is Graham Parker's "Squeezing Out Sparks." If new wave overall was a silly pajama party of diverse pop weirdness, then Parker was the guy taking a shit in the punch bowl. Grouchy, angry prole-rock with a bar band that makes Huey Lewis' News sound edgy, about the only thing this album has in common with other groups of the era is the flat, cookie-cutter production -- clearly this was a defection from the grandiose Jimmy Page multi-layering abominations, but when the end result is sterile as "Squeezing Out Sparks," you're better off listening to a live demo tape from some other nondescript London band. And if all this wasn't bad enough, Parker's ascerbic rants on things like abortion and the sex act in general uniquely separate him from even other English prick dorks; he makes Elvis Costello seem erudite, Joe Jackson reasonable. Finally, whichever genius decided uber-pedestrian Brinsley Schwartz was a good enough guitar player to deserve so many goddamn solos needs to have been flushed out of the music industry immediately. The only thing he lends this album is a suitable reason for Parker to be so pissed off all the time.

Alice in Chains "Dirt" [1992]

Further proof -- as if any was needed -- that Seattle's grunge movement was nothing more than 80s LA-metal, minus the blow but plus plenty of H, Alice in Chains' "Dirt" articulates the manifestations of these two main stylistic differences between LA and Seattle: they've replaced the high-end screech cokeheads can't hear with deep bass rumblings neighbors two blocks over can't avoid, and traded the studded leather for stinky jeans. Alice in Chains was not the most famous Seattle band -- they barely crack the top ten, actually -- but their sound is a perfect representation of the glum anonymity, near-zero melody and burnout guitar crunch that infected the Pacific Northwest for far too many years a couple decades ago. On "Dirt," they sound like nothing so much as Guns 'n Roses with major self-esteem issues. About the only thing separating these famous nobodies from the pack of other flannel-clad, greasy-haired losers are the perpetual vocal harmonies, as if anyone ever gave a shit about Wishbone Ash. (Who? Exactly.) But you don't have to look at Starbucks Corp.'s insane market cap to understand that if Seattle did anything well, it was the faux-mellow self-promotion of its rainy, geographically inconvenient, un-diverse and near-Canadian ass. Those who bought into the hype eventually realized they'd acquired a polished turd, and when that happens, that's when you get "Dirt" on your hands.

Robin Thicke "Blurred Lines" [2013]

Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" sounds like the kind of two-dimensional party music for dipshits who throw beads at girls who show them their tits at Mardi Gras. As such, is it really harmless fun, or the source of shame for the rest of some once-drunk bimbo's life? I know I feel pretty shamed listening to this pile of crap, and no one's called me a bimbo yet. I'm pretty sure Thicke's heard it plenty himself, however, but it's no stubble off his chin -- he's just marking time between Justin Timberlake releases with the over-cologned whiteboy nightclub soul, complete with whole verses in sugary falsetto and way too many notes in his vocal runs. Ubiquitous crossover producer Pharrell Williams clearly has no problem substituting Thicke for Timberlake; not only are they cardboard cut-outs of each other, but Pharrell's been a pop industry sell-out so long he makes Will.i.am look like Ol' Dirty Bastard. Ultimately, though, what could one possibly expect from a Robin Thicke album -- depth? Sincerity? Actual human emotion? Come on, that'd be like Tom Cruise playing Hamlet. You already know what this album sounds like before you even hear it; he was literally born into the network television entertainment industry, and not only would he be stupid to knock over the gravy train, it probably never will ever occur to him to do so. He's completely cut and dried -- the only blurred lines here are in the album's title.

Echo & the Bunnymen "Ocean Rain" [1984]

Sounding for all the world like the illegitimate offspring of Jim Morrison spoiled by privilege and crappy English weather, Ian McCulloch fronts the pointlessly-named Echo & the Bunnymen. On the band's breakthrough album "Ocean Rain," the boys flop around with vast and various instrumentations wholly unsuitable for a rock group. Then again, these guys really didn't rock anymore by this time -- they were following The Cure down the rabbit-hole (bunny-hole?) of gloom-pop, as it was clear they were always going to be too bland and un-frightening to make it in goth music. The end result proves McCulloch to be just as brazenly annoying as Bono, but without all the Jesus references and barely any of the comparable fame, largely due to his uncommon ability to wring the most grossly maudlin vocal sentiment over a laconic two-chord vamp while stringing together random and totally meaningless word phrases. How so many overworked and utterly forgettable tracks can constitute the band's "masterpiece" must be only in relation to the rest of the band's output -- from the redundant new wave rock of their earlier albums to the later glitzy schlock that both got them on MTV and forced them to implode in sell-out disgrace. If the name Echo & the Bunnymen seems to imply the images of a strange nightmare that ultimately makes no sense and should best simply be ignored, I'd say go with that notion.

The Jesus and Mary Chain "Psycho Candy" [1985]

These feckless poseurs have got to be grateful for the existence of the Sex Pistols -- nobody else are as big of self-centered dickfaces as The Jesus and Mary Chain. On their bland and washed-out echo-chamber distortion debut "Psycho Candy," the band had already arrived fully "developed": it's the sound of bleached acetate on 60s garage rock master tapes, run over a few times and slowed down to a snoozer tempo. That grossly noncommittal Gen-X "aesthetic" where only wishy-washy opinions are hip is pushed to its limits with these guys who can't be bothered to raise their voices above an annoyed whisper nor change the effects of their guitars; it's a conceit largely on display in the early-mid 90s, so these guys were at least ahead of their time in one way -- just not one worthwhile, in any sense of the word. They don't even sound like they really did any drugs, just like they're pretending to be high while they make sure their hair looks just right. Even their rocker tracks are boring as shit; Iggy Pop snores in a deep sleep with more fire than these indie pseudo-cool guys display on "Psycho Candy." Yet somehow they managed to influence other phony dope-head phony rockers like The Church and Love and Rockets, though those bands at least had brains enough not to bury everything underneath the white noise. Even this many years later, I totally want to beat the shit out of these guys; I finally understand where Phil Spector got the impetus to start killing people.

Traffic "John Barleycorn Must Die" [1970]

Existing in and fully representing that awful musical time in English rock between lame American R&B approximations and even lamer baroque folkie Hobbitations, "John Barleycorn Must Die" is everything about the music business in 1970 pointed in the wrong direction (save for anything relating to Black Sabbath): wonky, technical expertise supplanting feeling and passion, overly stylized orchestrations (as if they really believed it was Yoko who tore apart the Beatles), 17-verse tomes of Dylanesque dusty folk, meandering organ solos over two-chord vamps for the longest 7-minutes of anyone's life outside of an Allman Brothers record, a steaming load of Renaissance Faire bullshit, and goddamn jazz flutes riffing all over the place like a swarm of horse flies. Steve Winwood writes a song here called "Empty Pages," proving he didn't have a single new idea in his head, which also explains the endless instrumental indulgences elsewhere on this album. If there's one thing these wankers got right, it's the name of their band: Traffic is one frustratingly long, noisy, smelly jaunt to seemingly nowhere, perpetuated by a group of stoned idiots who just don't give a fuck. Checking the liner notes again just to make sure John Barleycorn isn't the actual name of this album's producer.

Spiritualized "Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space" [1997]

It's becoming increasingly more difficult to figure out whether Lou Reed fans are more likely to become interested in taking heroin or if lowlife heroin addicts find comfort in listening to Lou Reed. Not that it really matters -- both ways spell fucking disaster, and not just because of the drugs. On Spiritualized's "Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space," all the slo-mo pomp of 70s glam-rock's burnout phase meets all the shit Brian Eno threw away over the previous two-plus decades. They try to dub themselves "space rock," but Neil Armstrong's got nothing on this aimless, nebulous black hole. They could have easily called this album "High Music for High People for High Music..." repeated endlessly, like most of these tracks seem to do. Imagine Philip Glass pretending he's in the Stones, and that pretty much spells this album out with as little effort as these junkies bother to put forth. If you're a hipster doofus who somehow missed this pulsating narco-trash when it came out, think The Jesus & Mary Chain on several bottles of cough syrup. (Hmm -- maybe these fuck-ups thought Lester Bangs was going to give them a good review... in 1997.) Half-timed arrogant garage music with huge dollops of distorted swirl and the "Exile on Main St." horns -- this is what you want to hear for your entertainment? May you never sit up from your disgusting living room carpet.

50 Cent "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" [2003]

It's no secret street 'hoods who go all gangsta don't likely do too well in school, but less than a decade after Tupac and Biggie Smalls are senselessly killed, they still have a taste for the tragic, real-life handgun murder and mayhem of rappers like 50 Cent? Just how stoopid does one have to be? And we wonder why so many otherwise well-meaning people have permanently turned their backs on all the bad neighborhoods in this country. Then again, it's all a charade, isn't it? Sure, 50 Cent has a couple bullet scars and found his ass in prison for a spell (he's "authentic," in other words), but industry sell-outs Dr. Dre and Eminem are ultimately behind "Get Rich or Die Tryin'." In fact, it could be strongly argued that the only reason Fitty got a record deal in the first place is so Marshall Mathers could pretend he was gangsta, too (at least give him credit for knowing he couldn't get away with it on his own albums). What you hear track after track on 50 Cent's debut is violent power fantasies for the ultimately powerless; it must be some perverse therapy I can't quite fathom, but it boils down to the same sad phenomenon that perpetuates liquor stores and lotto in the ghetto. And 50 Cent has the nerve to keep saying he "ain't playin'" when he's cashing the fuck in on his old 'hood's various miseries and laughing about it? Shee-it.

Sam Cooke "Ain't That Good News" [1964]

Sam Cooke's last studio recording put together before he was beaten and shot to death without any pants on, "Ain't That Good News" smacks of incredible irony to everyone who wasn't a racist who worked for the FBI in 1964. But it's also ironic from a music critique standpoint: it marks the time when Cooke clearly displayed he was past his prime -- Smokey Robinson had by then already picked up the ball Cooke had fumbled. The nodules on his vocal chords had obviously progressed while his simpleton writing and lyrical stylings had obviously not. Further, all those cheesy Ray Charles horn charts were a step backwards, not forwards; just because Elvis had been hijacked by Colonel Tom and bound to the Paramount Studios lot doesn't mean Cooke shouldn't have known the electric guitars were coming anyway. I mean, even Berry Gordy could figure that one out. So Sam Cooke wrote and recorded "A Change Is Gonna Come" -- but in what practical way was he able to implement this, either professionally or personally? Well, he wasn't -- maybe that's the real tragedy here. He sounds tired on this track, like he'd been running around hotels with his dick swinging free for far too long. OK, that's really not fair -- that chick stole his clothes; but what exactly excuses the use of Lawrence Welk's orchestra to cheapen all of Cooke's ballads and decorate them like grotesquely out-of-date birthday cakes? If this was Cooke's way of making peace with his legions of haters, it clearly didn't work.

Genesis "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" [1974]

In this reviewer's opinion, it was a very good idea for Peter Gabriel and Genesis, his band of faceless art-wank peons, to combine the pinheadedness of prog rock with elfin Hobbit music -- this makes it much easier to dispose of in a single flush. Gabriel's descent into inscrutable madness is on full display here, all the more pathetic for him to be proudly flaunting his weird derangements -- you'd think somebody with this many mental problems would rather try to downplay what an embarrassing spectacle he's likely to become rather than write and record a double album of material dedicated to it. That his voice sounds like it resides in a decrepit octogenarian only heightens the sensation that you're witnessing something you know you shouldn't, and that it's likely to end gruesomely any second now. And all this before the introduction of those fucked up ELP synth solos -- good god. I mean, I know the 60s were terrible, but at least they didn't allow for impulsive baroque grandstanding by way of the sonic equivalent of marshmallow fluff. And no mistaking it -- every half-baked, dubious twist and key change came from Gabriel himself; it's quite obvious his band lacked enough spine to stand up to this lunatic's skewed visions. If anyone truly wanted to honestly assess "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway," they'd do well to rename it something like "Somebody Tell Grandpa to Get Off the Roof Before He Fucking Kills Himself."

Ray Charles "The Genius of Ray Charles" [1959]

Yeah, some genius -- hiring Frank Sinatra's horn section and faking his way through a bunch of worn-out covers doesn't exactly require much brain power at all, aside from resisting the temptation from the brass blasts at the top of each number to sing a rendition of "Meet the Flintstones." Besides, kowtowing to the ramping consumerist society of the Mad Men era was like shooting fish in a barrel; if Ray Charles were a true genius, he might have made people think twice before engaging in 3-martini lunches and tawdry affairs with their bimbo secretaries. Maybe we wouldn't have been caught napping when the government sent everyone's boys off to Vietnam, thus causing a hideous counter-movement of drug ingestion and lame, hairy young-person protest better known today as the hippie era. A little responsibility would've gone a long way, and it doesn't matter that Ray Charles was blind -- he'd still rather have hung at the Playboy Mansion than perform any worthwhile acts on behalf of society in general or black people in particular. Basically, Charles provided the bridge of black musician sell-outedness between Sammy Davis Jr and Motown, eventually manifesting itself in the existence of Hootie & the Blowfish and Wayne Brady. See, white folks? Black folks ain't so frightening, just so long as you're not part of fascist task-master Charles' traveling band. Besides, I'd like to see what kind of a genius he'd be if someone kept moving his electric piano around while he was trying to play it.

Belle and Sebastian "The Boy with the Arab Strap" [1998]

Nick Drake died way too soon; had he stuck around long enough to hear Belle and Sebastian, he'd finally have received all the adulation he thought he was due but really wasn't. Plus, he'd have some extraordinarily fey and glum Brits to mope around with and make him feel like he belonged, and he could have told them when to fucking end a song. But it's not just Drake this band is musically molesting on "The Boy with the Arab Strap," it's at turns Mo Tucker lead vocal amateur hour with extra-wimpy Lou Reed, along with stoned John Phillips demos and that jive-ass mellow beat the Beatles and the Stones were wise enough to stay away from but almost no one else in the 60s was. For "good" measure (though it's anything but), there's some Stonesish smacked-out slide, Winwood wheezing on the B-3, that Motown "every beat" drumming and a dab of Arthur Lee's patchouli oil. All this as if stupid neo-deadheads hadn't completely raped and pillaged 60s culture a full decade before this album was released. As a result, Belle and Sebastian come off about as interesting, progressive and courageous as tuna casserole with a Jello mold for dessert. It sounds for all the world like they've constructed a shoebox diorama of a hippie party for their homework assignment, and its affect is just as small and underwhelming.

Sonic Youth "Daydream Nation" [1988]

Most musical "experiments" are total failures, which is why no one in their right minds would normally release them to the music-buying public. But in the dark days of the late-80s indie "suck-rock," things were very different: pointless noisescapes and horridly amateurish vocals were not only encouraged, they were allowed to run on until they became both rude and boring. Take the cloying, clamorous and oh-so-full-of-itself "Daydream Nation" by Sonic Youth (a clearly ironic band name -- these people all look like Montessori substitute teachers): a brazen double-album full of droney pop-rock and tuneless guitar pollution. They sound like R.E.M. having a bad trip on Lou Reed's leftover drugs when they're not self-consciously aping garage rock like the art-school poseurs they are. Imagine the Stooges and some random bar chick recording on mushrooms while Iggy's in the middle of writing his doctoral thesis to get a clear view of how edgelessly pretentious this album comes off. Sonic Youth were always good at playing the "cool kids," however, which is how their crap talent and worse ideas likely got signed in the first place, and were thus able to lead hundreds of lost, spoiled, talentless young assholes like lemmings into the sea of the independent-label music business. Be thankful if you weren't suckered in back in the day, and resist any urge you may have to check it out -- "Daydream Nation" is nothing more than a musical dumpster dive.