Jerk Music Critic: Bastille, Bad Blood

There are mercifully a very few albums that try so very hard, are so well constructed, are so incredibly artful in their intention, but yet for whatever severe flaw they have you can only bear to listen to them once. And here's one of them. I enjoy the art and the nuance, which by and large avoid descent into pretense thanks to the (generally) textured lyrics and slick production. Quite possibly the literary peak is "Things We Lost In The Fire;" you really do feel the despair and loss, not least from Dan Smith's earnest vocals, but also from the literate and deliberately subtle wordplay. Another standout is "Icarus," blending the hubris and self-disregard of the Greek myth with modern ungroundedness' appetite for self-destruction, and "Oblivion," its refrain echoing from time outside of time: "Are you going to age with grace? Are you going to leave a path to trace?" I ought to love this album for not dumbing its themes down, and some tracks I do, like the deservedly popular single "Pompeii" — just close your eyes and pretend as the world ends around you — and the exuberant "Weight of Living, Pt II" with its sympathy for the great burden of just existing over rollicking arpeggios and an infectious beat. But that last part is the fatal flaw: this album just exhausted the merde out of me. The pacing is almost untenable. Even its more sedate moments are merciless, veering between irregular contemplation and unexpected percussive assaults, while the rest is relentless beats per minute. How can I enjoy the pleasures of the album's thematic complexities between track after track that won't let me breathe? Worse, the three bonus tracks don't add anything but more of the same abuse, though at least they're new (sadly "Weight of Living, Pt I" is not a patch on its follow-on, however). Eventually it got to the point where I felt there was something wrong with me to find this album so arduous and so terribly draining that I dreaded another run-through to write this review, that I really needed to be on amphetamines or something to truly plumb its depths. And by golly, no matter how incredible its literary value, that is not a compliment. (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.

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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.