A post to kill what little cred I may have

While about 95% of the music sent to me is from bands with whom I'm barely familiar, every so often I receive albums from more well-known bands. Rather than just letting them sit in my CD boxes, I figured it was time to give them a listen. I promise I'll have something a little more appropriate tomorrow!.



I want to like Arctic Monkeys. Really, I do. I'm about the only person in the world who didn't go crazy for Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not , and, as much as I enjoy not going along with what everyone else likes, I still feel like I'm missing out on something every time "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" comes on.

So with Favourite Worst Nightmare, I had a chance to redeem myself. I hoped it would be the album that helped me "get" Arctic Monkeys, which in turn would make me retrospectively enjoy Whatever People Say I Am..., which in turn would allow me to live a full, complete and happy life.

But the thing is, after listening to Favourite Worst Nightmare a few times, I still don't understand what makes Arctic Monkeys superior to, say, Maximo Park, or The View, or Klaxons, or any of the other British bands whose schtick doesn't translate across the Atlantic. "Flourescent Adolescent" is certainly a nice, jaunty tune, and it's easy to appreciate the way it swaggers along, but as far as the rest of the album goes...well, I just don't see how Arctic Monkeys are any different than any of those other NME-approved bands.



If me saying that didn't make you question my taste, then how about this: I really enjoy The Black Parade, last year's album from My Chemical Romance. Not as much as I liked Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, of course, and I certainly don't agree with any assessment of the album that would've called it the best album of 2006, but, overall, it's fun. Absurd, over-dramatic, overblown fun, on par with any of the enormous bands from Toronto of which I'm so fond. You can't take the album's concept seriously (which the band makes the mistake of doing on "Cancer"), but there is something genuinely Queen-like in the way MCR go so gloriously over-the-top on a song like "Welcome To The Black Parade". Elsewhere, "Mama" shows that the band is capable of doing gypsy-punk, albeit in their own, grandiose way. Scoff if you want, but The Black Parade shows that My Chemical Romance are more than just your standard emo band.



And just to ensure this post seems absolutely, irredeemably crazy, I'm going to praise Christian rock. And not in the Sufjan/Page France/Wovenhand kind of way, either; I'm talking about Good Monsters, the most recent album from Jars of Clay (whose frontman, it should be noted, is brother of Sufjan-collaborator/onetime bandmate Matthew Haseltine).

Admittedly, I think it's worth checking out because it's so unlike what you'd expect from this kind of music. Whereas most Christian bands are the antithesis of things like subtlety and complexity (and, generally, being anything approaching talented or interesting), Jars of Clay have always had a darker take on things, and that continues on with Good Monsters. While there a few tracks here that worryingly find the band straying towards happy-go-lucky, seemingly CCM-oriented territory (most notably on the awful "Even Angels Cry"), these are more than counterbalanced by songs like "Oh My God" (where they sing about battling doubt and not living up to professed beliefs) and the title track (which expands on the Edmund Burke quote of "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"). And, of course, there's "Mirrors & Smoke", which may or may not have Christian undertones, and which definitely features the former lead singer of Sixpence None The Richer, but is above all else a really fun country-rock song.

Of course, I may think all this simply for sentimental reasons. When I was a teenager and desperately wishing that my interest in music could somehow be crossed with my beliefs, Jars of Clay were about the only band I ever heard who weren't completely and utterly embarrassing. So it my enjoyment of Good Monsters may just be the result of me being a longstanding fan of the band (which, undoubtedly, also explains away why I own so many Oasis and Dave Matthews albums). But at the same time, I don't think that's all there is to it; I think that Good Monsters is a solid album. It'll never come up in any discussions on the best music of the year (unless, I guess, you happen to really, really be into Christian music), but it's still something that I think is a worthwhile listen.