Jerk Music Critic: Mike + the Mechanics, Living Years

I couldn't bear to listen to this album anymore when my father was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, but when COVID-19 finally killed him in whatever wave this benighted country is on now I decided it was time to dust it off again. To be sure, my relationship with my dad was evidently better than Mike Rutherford's in the title track, though I'd have liked a few more living years to tell him I loved him too. Still, other than that and the single "Nobody's Perfect," this record still comes off on balance to me as too slickly hollow. Much like the singer's smashed avo worldview in "Seeing is Believing" or the airbrushed Horatio Alger type of "Poor Boy Down" or even the unsubtle anti-war anthems of "Blame" and "Why Me?", it's all so machined and polished down that everything gets melted together and the whole thing feels unreal (the simplistic lyrics and 1980s-heavy synthorock don't help). The first two tracks brought tears to my eyes and "Beautiful Day" is largely a solid cut from the album's remaining morass, but overall writing this review turned out to be more therapeutic than the record itself. I just wish I could hug you one more time, Dad. I really do. (Content: no concerns.)

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Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟🌟
A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟
Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

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Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

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Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

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How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.