Jerk Music Critic: DeVotchKa, How It Ends

A quirky landmark in gypsy punk, this unusual album from a unique band is easily unlike anything you've ever heard before, and that's not just for having more accordion music than a Weird Al-themed bar mitzvah. The band is at its best when it's at its most pensive; witness the heartrent wistful moans of Nick Urata on "Dearly Departed" and the almost jangle-pop "Too Tired," along with the beguiling instrumental "Charlotte Mittnacht." Their stunt styles are less solid, though: I rather like the crazed Romany klezmer feel of "Lunnaya Pogonka" but it gets a little old on "Such A Lovely Thing," and I don't care for their mariachi moments in "We're Leaving" and "The Enemy Guns" (complete with white guy Spanish) really much at all. (Not to mention the odd "Viens Avec Moi" which defies categorization in a bad way.) Still, the album wins points for fearless creativity and general listenability, though the star of this variegated pageant is undeniably the beautiful title track's soulful meditation upon futility, recapitulated to great effect in the closing "Reprise." Given that, I'd have to say it ends well. (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

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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.