1. Särö 2. Mies Murtuu 3. Matador 4. Keksiyö 5. Ikuiset 6. Paula Puree 7. Se Seurustelee 8. Mustat Hevoset 9. Mies ja Nainen 10. Rautavaara Rules 11. Öitä
When Ihmiset released their debut album Sata Vuotta (Hundred Years) in 2008, the best record of the year was released in January. When Ihmiset released their second album Pojat Ei Tanssi (Boys Don’t Dance) in 2010, the best record of the year was also released in January. So now when they’re releasing their third record in January 2012, is the best record once again released in January? Let’s find out.
A Man and a Woman. That’s basically the only topic Herra Ylppö (Herra = Mister) has ever sung about in his songs for his so called solo project band Ihmiset. The other group Ylppö is part of, Maj Karma, gets some other lyrical content besides the usual relationship twaddle, but the message is still mainly the same with some variations. If you can take all this emotion-rich content and even like it (not to mention understand Finnish language), the music of these bands can really speak to you lyrically. At least it has spoken to me like this in the past, but in the case of Mies ja Nainen I was first uncertain. I have heard all this before, why should I be enthusiastic about it again? In the end I came to a conclusion that this is Ylppö’s world and he may have wanted to form some kind of trilogy with these three records. In the future however, Ylppö must come up with something else because the relationship fountain has now been depleted.
This is an international blog, so how would a foreigner hear this record? Instrumentally everything is fine. First song Särö (Crack, but not drug crack) starts with a simple echoing piano riff, hitting drums and recognizable Hamid Moeini guitars. As a fan I’m thinking immediately that yes, this is exactly what I’ve expected the record to sound like. Matador exhibits some Spanish bull fighting pipes and CMX-like guitar riffs in the beginning while Mustat Hevoset (Black Horses) is bright guitar pop. The whole sound of the album is very radio friendly and most songs are in single length. Alternative, punk and metal aspects are far and between. As the album progresses many things start becoming clearer. The songs on Mies ja Nainen don’t hold the candle to that of the previous record's, but while the other two albums severely lacked coherence, Mies ja Nainen has plenty of it.
Originally this was supposed to be a double album with “Mies” being the energetic rock record while “Nainen” would focus on more settled and gentle songs. What happened in the end was that the band decided to make one good album instead of two mediocre ones and you can hear this compromise on the finished record. Some songs sound like they came straight from the rock record; some from the gentle record and others are a good merge of the two. It’s the songs “in the middle” that clue these two different sounds together to make an eloquent listening experience.
This is a good record and it fixes the issues Ihmiset has had in the past, but emerges some new problems. What is missing here too much is that trembling feeling that ”this song is freaking great”. The band was able to achieve this feeling in the past because they favored variability over coherence, so it seems that in the case of this band the other seems to come at the price of another. This is a shame as the band spent the entire year making this album and the finished product in some ways feels less than what they aimed for or at least less than what the audience was expecting it to be. Even the graphics in the CD-case are almost exactly the same as that of the previous album’s.
All the songs on Mies ja Nainen are good, some very good, but that's about it. The record is missing the edge this band had in the past. The sound is sleek and easy, unchallenging. Only the last song Öitä [translated (Good) Night] makes an exception. On the plus side though the band plays excellent as usual and the album is convincingly mixed and mastered.
Lastly to answer the big question, no, this most likely won't be the best record of the year. But I do have to admit that I have been very hard on this album in this review. Mies ja Nainen is exactly the kind of a record Ihmiset wanted to make this time. They were set to make a great commercial Finnish rock album and Mies ja Nainen embodies just that. I think that Ylppö fans will be pleased though that Maj Karma is coming back, hopefully next January.
1. You Da One
2. Where Have You Been
3. We Found Love
4. Talk That Talk
5. Cockiness (Love It)
6. Birthday Cake
7. We All Want Love
8. Drunk On Love
9. Roc Me Out
10. Watch N’ Learn
11. Farewell
Do I listen to Rihanna's songs? Yes, a little bit and I have also happened to like some of them. Do I listen to Rihanna's records? Absolutely no, but now I will so god have mercy.
Rihanna has done a bit of reinvention on all of her records, but the base is always very much the same. Short songs with Rihanna's voice mixed and ”mastered” very loud to cover the brainless instrumentals. The only mission given to instrumentals is to make the songs sound bitching through a car's subwoofer.
Talk That Talk starts with a man swallowing song You Da One which you've already heard unless you've been living in a hole. This is one of the only songs on the album which they actually saw necessary to take some effort with, but I got to be ruthless; this song is as annoying as herpes simplex.
On to the second track and what can be expected to be released as a single sooner than later, Where Have You Been. How can I predict this? Because this song is hot. However, there is one issue that ruins almost everything. The radio. Where Have You Been is too short. It keeps building up, reaches great heights, but just the second you expect it to hit the apex, it crashes to the four minute marker and cuts off. This is disappointing and sums up what is pretty much the main problem with Rihanna altogether. She has no artistic or musical ambition. If she had even a bit of it, she might say in the studio: ”Fish it! This song needs one extra minute and I'm going to sing my heart out.” But no, it doesn't seem to matter to her or any of the dozen producers behind this... album.
Where Have You Been is such a disappointment, that the mega hit We Found Love doesn't give much comfort. Too bad that it's these three first tracks that have any real potential. When they end, the listener crosses the border to trash territory of songs that would just about make it to a Kim Kardashian album.
To the Fourth song Talk That Talk... Okay, the featured guest Jay Z is a fine artist, but I don't want to listen to his bravado about his million dollar homes and b-ches in his bedroom. I heard he just became a father. Congratulations, but c'mon this track is just lame. The song's biggest achievement is that I forget it immediately once it's over. Fortunately this seems to be the case with many other upcoming tracks, so I will be sleeping my night peacefully once I'm done roasting.
Cockiness (Love It). I am not going to quote any of the lyrics in this song, but you can think of Britney's If You Seek Amy and multiply it by hundred. Or more like a million. Wait, am I really listening to the version of this album that doesn't have the parental advisory sticker? Birthday Cake continues from where Cockiness left, only that this time you don't have to suffer more than about one and a half minutes. Those 1 minute 18 seconds though I need to atone to my ears somehow, because this song is the most horrible, awful, c.r.a.p. I have ever endangered my ears to. Birthday Cake is a study book example of a sound and music genre which I cannot endure. It goes something like this: Bad < Worse < (the) Worst < Rihanna's Birthday Cake.
Fortunately this means that the rock bottom song is behind now.
We All Want Love. I agree, but is the song any good? Let's take Madonna's latest ballad Masterpiece. I can't really say that I like it, it's not that special, but the lyrics are thoughtful and intelligent. The lyrics on We All Want Love aren't intelligent at all for most parts. This is a drag as the way I see it, the only way to sell this kind of a song to people that have already heard hundreds of songs like this is to offer something a bit more original and fresh. This song doesn't. On the upside there is a feel of journey and this song offers a (sex) break to Talk That Talk's one dimensional message.
Drunk On Love is a clear Beyoncé rip off. Rihanna is not a bad singer, neither is this song terrible, but since Beyoncé does this kind of thing better than Rihanna, why bother listening to this song at all? Let's listen to Beyoncé instead, or rather get done listening to this record quickly.
Roc Me Out and Watch n' Learn aren't on this record to do much else than fill space. I was about to put Farewell into same pack with Drunk On Love, but it does sound a bit more like Rihanna. Farewell concludes the record well and softens Talk That Talk's explicit message, but doesn't do much more than that.
It's true that in the era of iTunes single song downloads you don't need more than a couple of big hits to make a sufficient amount of money, but I am sure fans of Rihanna would deserve a little bit more than what they're offered here. Rihanna could come up with an album that had eleven We Found Loves, but if this mediocre album sells well anyway, what the point? I can see her fans getting enjoyment out of this record, but six albums in seven years equals bloat.
This record wasn't as bad as I assumed it to be, but since it compromises all its potentiality for maximum commerciality, it's right where it belongs in the Roast section of this blog. I didn't even expect art from Rihanna, so I decided to roast this record instead of writing an ordinary review before I even listened to it. Turns out it was the right choice. Well, at least someone gets to laugh on her way to the bank.
Millions of fans around the world have heartfeltly anticipated the year 2012 and the dawn of a new Madonna era. I am one of them. Madonna released her first single 30 years ago this year, so why do we still care?
That first single, Everybody, was a small circle dance hit in the New York club scene upon its release in late 1982, but it was a perfect place to be to start a career in music. Step by step Madonna made name for herself with other hits such as the must-to-do-live Holiday and Borderline which earned her an award in the very first annual MTV video music awards in 1984, the very same show she performed her then biggest hit Like a Virgin in a wedding dress to leave an indelible impression. Nowadays pretty much all the top solo acts we know are female, but in the early 80's it was a man's and Michael Jackson's world. Madonna broke boundaries for women in pop with her apologizing image and control over her own career.
The contrast between Madonna's first two albums Madonna (aka The First Album) and Like a Virgin is already measurable. It would have been natural to keep doing the same thing because her debut was hit, but Madonna had other plans. Nile Rogers (best known for David Bowie's 1982's record Let's Dance) was chosen to produce most of the album and together he and Madonna came up with something that marked a major milestone in both of their careers. Even to this date when Madonna does an interview a clip from her Like a Virgin or Material Girl videos is shown. They are definitely hits, but are Madonna's first two records really anything special today? Few of the songs have managed to withstand the test of time and some Madonna fans like me aren't even that big of a fan of her early recordings. Songs on Like a Virgin are played by an actual band while The First Album utilized more of that day's modern technology. Like a Virgin was also considerably more expensive to make mainly thanks to Nile Rogers's big pay check.
What should be noted about Madonna is that before she had everything, she had nothing and had to do with very little money and property. She became very stingy in her early years in New York city and even today she is very cautious about how much money she is spending and this awareness applies for the recording process as well. Most of the time she likes to stay away from flashy studios and big names in the business. Madonna rather finds a relatively unknown DJ and makes a song with him in his apartment with the equipment available. This is the way she worked in her early years and this is the way she still likes to work today.
Madonna's third record True Blue (1986) sailed on more serious waters while still catering to the more up-beat audience. She sang about topics such as teenage pregnancy on Papa Don't Preach and abusive relationship on Live To Tell (a song that can be perceived in many ways). True Blue was dedicated to Madonna's then husband Sean Penn and this has a clear effect on the overall atmosphere of the record. However, while True Blue is her biggest selling album worldwide, it is just another ”some killers some fillers” in Madonna's catalogue. It was her fourth album Like a Prayer (1989) that really worked from the beginning to the end.
Like a Prayer achieved critical acclaim and Madonna was recognized as ”a real artist” for the first time during her career by people whom hadn't been paying any serious attention to her in the past. Madonna already had a bigger role on True Blue as a producer, but Like a Prayer took another step forward in this area. Most people who've heard about Madonna don't give her credit as a producer-songwriter, but she definitely deserves this. While making Like a Prayer Madonna could go to a room with the band, play a song and give directions to musicians what she wanted them to do in each part of the song after they played it.
Year 1990 is the peak of Madonna's career. She released the delightful I'm Breathless soundtrack for the movie Dick Tracy which she also acted in and went on the unforgettable Blond Ambition tour. One of her biggest hits, the gay-anthem Vogue thrilled everyone, and if I had to come up with the list of the best bass lines ever, Vogue would be a strong contender on that list. This song strengthened Madonna's status and made her seem almost completely infallible. Madonna must have also felt this way, because on her next moves she began to challenge her audience even more.
Musically Madonna had everything at this point. She embarrassingly had to admit that to that date MTV hadn’t banned any of her somewhat raunchy music videos, a fact that was about to change. Justify My Love is a twisted sex fantasy in a nameless, plain hotel. Madonna might not have been nude herself on this music video, but she was about to show everything in 1992 with her controversial sex book and supporting studio album Erotica. The Sex book was released two weeks earlier than the record, scaring the conservative world to not give Erotica the appreciation it deserves. Either Madonna had misjudged her audience or she simply didn't care about going too far, but musically she was stronger than ever.
Erotica (1992) is some of Madonna's best work. It sounds cold, ascetic and unproduced, like it was recorded on the streets of Harlem with some jazz club thrown into the mix. Madonna doesn’t even sing most of the time, she speaks and acts as a storyteller in a journey through topics such as, yes sex, but also loving one another and self-consciousness. Erotica is very hard to listen to, it leaves you frigid and hollow. It's also one of Madonna's least successful albums to date. Although commercial success has always been important to Madonna, this record clearly wasn't supposed to be a treat for everyone.
By 1994 Madonna had been driven into a corner. She was unpopular and had to find a way to recover from all the bad publicity. R&B was very popular at the time, but as Madonna didn't have the voice for it, what can be heard in her vocals on her sixth album Bedtime Stories (1994) is a successful compromise. Bedtime Stories was a softer, warmer record, an antidote for Erotica. However, it lacked coherence. Madonna had never worked with so many people before, branching from Babyface to Björk. While Madonna didn't meet Björk personally, Björk did write her an ambient electronic track Bedtime Story, a song that acted somewhat as a base for Madonna on her journey to more electronical music later in the 90's. Other examples of the songs on the record were hip hop flavored Human Nature and Secret that leaned towards softer R&B beats and acoustic guitars.
After Bedtime Stories Madonna landed a role in Evita, a musical movie project which had been on and off the works for years. To perform the lead role in this musical about the 1940's Argentina's first lady Eva Perón, Madonna had to book lessons with a voice couch. It debatable whether this made Madonna's voice better or worse, but it did make her more aware of her voice and opened her new possibilities vocally. This new found glory can be heard in her mid-90's work in songs such as You'll See and the Oscar-winning You Must Love Me.
After finally becoming a mother in her late 30's, Madonna went through periods of deeper self-examination. What could she teach to her daughter? Kabbalah, while a religion resented by many, offered her new stories to tell to her audience. Ray of Light (1998) is the great masterpiece of the 90's pop. It's relaxed, restrained and full of live's wisdom. Madonna worked on the record mainly with William Orbit, and the biggest change of all compared to Madonna's previous work is the limited use of a live band. Everything on the record was mostly done with computers, synthesizers and electric guitars. Every song is there for a reason and five singles were released, all reaching either great or moderate success.
For me Ray of Light was my first touch with Madonna. At that time MTV was still a real music video channel and I remember watching it in the mornings. Madonna's videos such as Frozen, Ray of Light and The Power of Goodbye aired, but I couldn't read the info box so I thought it was a different artist in each video. From there on Madonna began to appear more in my life and each time I got more and more interested in this mysterious, ageless woman.
Madonna made her next two records Music (2000) and American Life (2003) with a French producer called Mirwais Ahmadzaï, whom Madonna found through her own record label Maverick. Madonna began to study guitar playing and was able to have a bigger part in the composing process of a song. While Music experimented with house music, American Life was more folk-electronica. As these two records were mostly done by the same producer, they do sound similar, but are still two different sides of a coin. The biggest change between the records was Madonna's political awareness which was sparked by 9/11. Lyrically American Life doesn't reflect this event as the themes on the album evolve mainly around fame such as in the desperate sounding Hollywood, religion in X-Static Process and antimaterialism in I'm So Stupid, an antithesis to Material Girl dating two decades in the past. In any case, American Life can be seen as a flop. People hear what they see and this time they saw Madonna in a military outfit throwing a grenade to George W. Bush's lap. Such imaginary was resented in the USA at that time and Madonna once again lost audience although she pulled back from releasing the controversial American Life music video in question. In 2001 when Madonna toured for her Ray of Light and Music albums, she focused mainly around songs from those two albums, but on the 2004's Reinvention Tour she cave little room to American Life, performing many old hits instead. No wonder this tour is widely considered a fan favorite.
Madonna had worked with a young British DJ called Stuart Price on both of her most recent tours at the time, so he was a natural selection to work with for her next album as well. What was originally supposed to be music for a play (in a theater), the play was canceled and little of that music was salvaged to Madonna's next album. Madonna ordered Price to come up with something that sounded like ”Abba on drugs”. What resulted was the Gimme Gimme Gimme -sampling Hung Up, her biggest hit to date reaching top of the charts in 41 countries around the world (yes, I do remember this kind of trivia). Digging deeper into Madonna's tenth studio album Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005), more samples await if you are able spot them. I Love New York samples the guitar riff from The Stooges's I Wanna Be Your Dog while Future Lovers loans from Donna Summer's 70's disco hammer I Feel Love. Almost every song on the album sampled something, so it can be debated whether Madonna had lost her ability to come up with stuff of her own, but in its core Confessions was a tribute album to music she grew up with. Older generations got to spot all the samples while younger generations could simly enjoy the modernized retro sound. At that time the music critics praised the record, but were not sure how it would stand the test of time. In my opinion Confessions on a Dance Floor has managed excellently and it still sounds fresh and exciting today.
Something what Madonna hadn't really done in the past was to go mainstream, at least to what extent she was about to go on her eleventh studio album Hard Candy (2008), produced mainly by Pharrell Williams and Timbaland. Hard Candy was made is short sessions and took all 2007 to make, so when it was finally released the wave of this sound was already settling down. Madonna wasn't anymore the trendsetter she used to be and many fans were let down. Hard Candy isn't a very good record, but it has its moments such as the experimental 4 Minutes, relentless Give It 2 Me, sleek She's Not Me and slowly accelerating Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You.
It's been four years of Hard Candy and we are finally getting new material with her twelfth record M.D.N.A released in spring 2012. In the future Madonna wants to focus more on films so do us all a favor and don' watch her newest film W.E. or buy it on DVD. Buy M.D.N.A instead and go see her on tour so she wakes up. She has to pay her rent. If she doesn't make enough money with movies, she'll have to keep recording great studio albums. Fortunately she has signed a three record contract with Universal so her last efforts in music shouldn’t be around the corner just yet.
People keep thinking who will be ”the next Madonna”, but I personally think there won't be any next Madonna. Like there were no next Elvis, or next Michael Jackson, or a hundred other artists and bands that are so unique that no one is going to take their place. Madonna is an icon, and icons are irreplaceable.
I sort out the content of this blog according to following categories.
Shred – Simple review of a
recently released album.
Retrospective – Review of an
older album that is still worth listening to.
Roast – Review of something
hazardous to human ears.
Bandspan – A relatively
”short” peak to some band's or artist's history.
For some record to be featured in retrospective, it must be at least three
years old. Newer records are reviewed in Shreds. Roasts I will write far and between,
but when I do, I do it with a humorous tone. A successfully written roast might
even make the reader want to find out what I'm all about in my roast, but
beware, you've been warned for a reason. Bandspan as a section has the same
problem as most biographies. To change it up a little I'm not going to write my
take on only the bands and artists I'm interested in and know a lot about, but
also on bands that I outright hate or never even heard of. As bandspans are
very time-consuming to write and to read, they will be the rarest type of text
I come up with and publish in this blog.
I give a chance to all kinds of music and I try to discover something new,
if not every week, at least every month. I do this mainly by visiting the
library and boldly picking up records from the shelf which I might have never
heard of. I know that even in genres that I don't pay a lot of attention to,
there is still some rap or jazz that please my brain and ears. However, I don't
have time to listen through thousands of records so my discoveries are strongly
guided by what artists I have heard of in the past. Everyone knows Motörhead,
but has everyone really listened to it? My answer to this question a couple of
months ago was a no, but I gave it a spin and liked it a lot.
We all should remember that although we might not like something, to
someone else that music is a big deal. Let's take Justin Bieber for instance.
To some girls JB is probably the center of their lives although this artist
causes strong polarization and many people have expressed their loathe towards
him. I turn my radio off when Justin Bieber is playing, but I still don't judge
him or the people who dig his music. It's just not my cup of tea.
I start my blogging with this kind of speech, because as I keep updating
new material to the site, this blog won't ultimately become a rock blog or a
metal blog. This is a general music blog which gives credit to whole albums
listened from beginning to the end. No matter what genre they are.
I am a 20-year-old business student from eastern Finland. One day I was given a school assignment to start my own blog and since I have been thinking about doing something like this for a longer period of time, I decided to take the assignment seriously. I found this good a chance to get creative so I began writing about something I am very fond of, music.
I have never played any instruments seriously until I walked into a music store in the summer of 2011 and bought my first electric guitar. Better late than never some might say.
I listen to a lot of different records and want to share my opinions on them (with respect to the artists and people behind them). I don't care if I get only a single follower. I always write like my text was read by millions, though there is a point where I decide that "Alright, this text is now ready to be published and I am not going to work on it any longer". Bare this in mind while reading my blog.
1. Särö 
