Music Review for The Quest

Webster’s dictionary defines “ears” as “the characteristic vertebrate organ of hearing and equilibrium consisting in the typical mammal of a sound-collecting outer ear separated by the tympanic membrane from a sound-transmitting middle ear that in turn is separated from a sensory inner ear by membranous fenestrae” and also seven other things. Fascinating. I like to use my ears to listen to music, sometimes. My thesis for this article is that my music is good to listen to and that you should listen to it too.

The first album I will be reviewing is Electric President’s self-titled album, “Electric President.” It came out in 2005 on the Morr Music label. Despite the label name being an English pun, note that the label is based in Germany. This will be important when I tell you that the label name is not a pun at all and is just the label founder’s last name. What a bummer.

Despite being on a German label, Electric President continues in the American tradition of singing their lyrics in English. I would describe their lyrics and vocals as being like The Beatles, if The Beatles stopped harmonizing and took lessons from the guy who sang for The Microphones. If you don’t know who The Microphones are, you might be surprised to learn that they are people, not microphones! They sound like The Beatles, if The Beatles were born in the 70s and were depressed because they had never met each other.

The songs on the album are good. Electric President writes ten songs for this album. Ten is not a lot of songs for a whole album, but don’t worry, four of the songs are longer than five minutes so you know you are getting your money’s worth. If you download this album illegally, well, you have no right to complain about album, length, buster! So, if you like songs and would like ten of them, please try out Electric President.
This album is: Good
You should: Buy it
Try it if you like: The Beatles

The second album I will be reviewing is OOIOO’s album, “Taiga.” It came out in 2006 on the Thrill Jockey label. You may be surprised to note that OOIOO’s band name is in all capitals. That is because they are Japanese. This is why, when speaking to someone who does not understand English, you must speak English very loudly. They know the language, they just don’t understand the lower-case letters!

In fact, all of OOIOO’s songs are all in capital letters, too! My favorite is “ATS,” or maybe it was “UMO.” Sorry, but it’s hard to remember the song names because I don’t speak Japanese. Anyway, if you are interested in strange foreign albums, you are probably curious as to how this album sounds. If you listen to it, it sounds kind of like The Beatles, if the Beatles played tribal drums and yelled a lot – in Japanese! Sean Lennon once played on an album with OOIOO. I don’t think it was this album, but I’m not really sure. Sean Lennon is the son of John Lennon, who was in The Beatles.

OOIOO is a side project of Boredoms, a noise band from Japan which has mastered the lower case. The sound of Boredoms is kind of hard to describe, as it’s mostly strange yelping into the microphone (in Japanese!) with weird guitars and keyboards in the background. It sounds a lot different from OOIOO, and really closer to something like The Residents or The Beatles.
This album is: Good
You should: Buy it
Try it if you like: The Beatles
Note: OOIOO is going to be at the Doug Fir Lounge on March 24th!

The third album I am going to review is Ghostface Killah’s “Fishscale,” which came out in 2006 on the Def Jam label. I was a little scared to listen to this album at first for a few reasons. First of all, my face is very pale and I did not want to be killed, because then I would be unable to listen to the album. Second of all, the man on the cover looked very mean, and maybe he installed a virus on the CD. You never know who is a hacker these days. Make sure you have Norton Antivirus installed before listening to this album on your computer.

After a few days I worked up the courage to listen to the album, and it was pretty good. He did this weird thing where he talked really fast instead of singing. I think it was pretty cool and this may be where music is going in the future. He was, like Electric President, speaking in English. This was a big relief.

Behind the talking there was music, and the music was pretty good. It’s hard to think of how to describe it, exactly, but I’d say that it’s something like The Beatles. If I had to think of a term to describe the music it would have to be that it was “pretty good.”
This album is: Good
You should: Buy it
Try it if you like: The Beatles