Album Review: Kanye West's Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

My friend Travis asked me what I thought of Kanye West’s new album, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” and this is my assessment in short:

“More sexually and racially charged than previous stuff. Too many appearances by other artists and not enough Kanye (I’d say only 60% of the album is him). Lacks but 1 or 2 songs you can truly dance to so I doubt it will get lots of club play. 1 reference to South Park fishsticks episode. The way the samples are mixed in can seem choppy and amateurish at times. I like it but not as much as either of the past two albums”

However, to shake off the rust of a nice relaxing Thanksgiving break, I decided to write up a formal review for the blog. I fully expect this to become my most viewed post, so those of you who are new here, this isn’t my best work, nor what the blog usually consists of. Music is a hobby, sports is the job.

Title: “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”

The album was originally supposed to be called “Good Ass Job”, which I like much more, this title is an accurate description of the music that lies within. As a matter of fact, you can pretty much classify every song as one of those adjectives and I will as we move on. I can’t help but wonder if Kanye’s self confidence is waning. “Good Ass Job” just seems like it’d be right up his alley. Seriously, he title is irrelevant, let’s move on.

Track 1: Dark Fantasy

Classification: Beautiful

Best Lyric: See Description Below

The intro harmonies (Auto tuned or not) sung by the chorus are very pleasing to listen to. You won’t get sick of listening to them. As soon as the beat drops in you know that Kanye has had his fun playing with the auto tuner and has now gone back to the straight rapping that made him famous. Kanye delivers what will undoubtedly be the most quoted lyric from the album on this track, “too many Urkels on your team that’s why your Winslow.” I bet more people already have heard that line than have heard the song. I like this song and wouldn’t be surprised if it was released as a single at some point down the road.

Track 2: Gorgeous

Classification: Dark

Best Lyric: “Choke a South Park Writer with a Fish stick”

Classic Kanye venting about all the shit he puts up with and how his blackness is repressed by the man. Nobody makes you wear those polos, Kanye. Try to rap about how shitty you have it next time you hop in your inevitably sweet ass car. The way Kanye takes a shot at the South Park writers is exactly the reason they made fun of him in the first place. He takes himself way too seriously. He’s lucky the season is over and they can’t strike back with a 30 minute blitzkrieg to his 8 word jab. The guitar riff that comprises the primary portion of the track gets repetitive. This one’s not terrible but I wouldn’t recommend buying this track on ITunes or anything.

Track 3: Power

Classification: Beautiful

Best Lyric: “Fuck SNL and the whole cast. Tell ‘em Yezzy said they can
kiss my whole ass. More specifically they can kiss my asshole. I’m an asshole? You niggas got jokes.”

Everyone’s heard this one by now. This song kicks ass. The tribal sounding intro with the siren and everything is adrenaline inducing. Kanye’s shot at SNL is funny but ironic, because he performed this song on SNL in October of this year. This song speaks for itself, go listen to it and make it your goddamn ringtone.

Track 4/5: All of the Lights

Classification: Beautiful

Best Lyric: : “I slapped my girl” Didn’t Kanye know Rihanna would be
singing the hook on this track when he wrote it?

This might be my favorite track from the album. The intro is awesome, mixing strings, piano and horns all in one masterful section. Rihanna’s voice suits the song perfectly. I could have done without the pulsating bongos (I’m not even totally sure what kind of drums they are) that you hear in the heavier parts of the song but I’m nit picking now. Go listen to this one, but try to find a version with the interlude latched onto the beginning.

Track 6: Monster

Classification: Twisted

Best Lyric: “My presence is a present kiss my ass”

The beat is strange and cool, emphasis on the strange. There are weird noises…just…weird. Kanye’s flow (I’m white, am I allowed to say flow? Okay, good) is flawless. He doesn’t leave himself much time to inhale and you can hear him gasp several times during the song. I bet this song kicks ass live. Unfortunately, this is a prime example of this album’s biggest flaw: Feat. This has a bunch of artists that aren’t Kanye. Which is fine every now and then, but the album as a whole and this song especially, has too many other artists. One of these is something called “Nicky Minaj”. I don’t get it. This one’s a keeper though.

Track 7: So Appalled

Classification: Dark

Best Lyric: “Unlike Hammer, 30 million can’t hurt me” –Jay-Z

Jay-Z steals the show on this one and I didn’t want to talk about anyone but Kanye in this review but his performance on this song is relatively unimpressive. This song is another example of overuse your buddies for verses in your rap songs. The “hook” (if you can call it that) comes from Swizz Beats and the way it’s mixed into the songs is choppy and shitty and amateurish. As far as I know, this wasn’t sampled from another song or anything so it was recorded for the purpose of use in this song. Why then, does it sound like it was done in someone’s garage? The supporting track is cool though.

Track 8: Devil in a New Dress

Classification: Twisted

Best Lyric: “I hit the Jamaican spot, at the bar, take a seat I ordered you jerk; she said "you are what you eat”

This is your standard, mid-album, Kanye song. Nothing to write home about but a decent song to listen to. The video for this song (which I’m not sure is official or anything) is really weird featuring who I think is Beyonce dressed as some human-bird hybrid. Whatever, I’d totally do Beyonce. I’m pretty sure I could kick Jay-Z’s pudgy ass 1 on 1. The song lacks musical variety, comprised of the same beat throughout. Not a must listen but not detrimental to the album.

Track 9: Runaway

Classification: Twisted

Best Lyric: The entire hook, don’t act like you don’t love it

The song is built around the chorus which prompts us to have a toast for douche bags and assholes the world over. Unfortunately, there little else in the song worth noting, other than the album’s second Legend of Sleepy Hollow reference. I like the hook enough that I won’t skip this track in the car, but it overrates the rest of the track.

Track 10: Hell of a Life

Classification: Dark

Best Lyric: “No more drugs for me. Pussy and religion is all I need.”

One of the few traditionally structured, verse-hook-verse-hook –rinse-repeat songs on the album. The hook is a callback to Black Sabbath’s Iron Man and the haunting piano arpeggios immediately thereafter are my favorite part of the song. I like this song a lot but sadly, it displays more shitty producing. When you go listen to the song, notice how that aforementioned piano arpeggio just sort of disappears? Doesn’t that sound like shit? Fade that shit out.

Track 11: Blame Game

Classification: Beautiful

Best Lyric: “You weren’t perfect but you made life worth it.” Amen, Kanye

More heavy piano use. As far as lyrics go (and keep in mind, lyrics normally matter very little to me) this one is the most personal and heavy track on the album. I feel Kanye’s pain and regret when I listen to the song. I don’t know if he’s speaking from personal experience or not but he’s good enough on this track to at least make me ask the question. The song would be worth listening to for Chris Rock’s cameo alone, but it is complete and well rounded. Total keeper.

Track 12/13: Lost in the World/Who Will Survive in America?

Classification: Beautiful

Best Lyric: “I’m Lost in the World” Aren’t we all

This one opens with harmonies as well, this time clearly auto tuned. The beat drops in and Kanye has a verse, his only of the song. There’s not much to say about the first part of this song because there’s not much to it. What is there, however, sounds good. When the track turns over, we get a speech from Gil Scott Heron’s “Comment #1”. It’s racially charged. I’d break it down and analyze it but its 11:30 and I’d like to get this up before most of you sign off Facebook for the night so let’s conclude things here. Go listen to the album its pretty good.

Here’s a cool YouTube video of most of the stuff Kanye sampled to make the album:

Get the Led Out: Concert Review

Lots of people love Led Zeppelin. I am one of those people. Nevermind Robert Plant’s impressive and rare vocal range, or Jimmy Page’s guitar riffs. Nevermind John Paul Jones’ technical soundness, or the fact that John Bonham is mentioned in Step Brothers. What makes Led Zeppelin truly great is the vast spectrum of sound one can enjoy while listening to their anthology. I spent an entire week this semester listening to every Zeppelin album, in order. I listened to an album a night while I “did homework”. It was staggering. Bluesy stuff, middle eastern stuff, early metal, folk music, these guys dabbled in everything. Combine the quality of what your ears are enjoying with all the rock and roll intangibles (sex, drugs, Satan, mud sharks {go ahead and Google that one}, sex, long hair, iconic album cover or two, a vomit-induced death, sex) and you’ve got one of the greatest rock bands of all time. These guys were able to own a title like that despite being a little nerdy (come one, The Battle of Evermore? When’s the Dragonball Z marathon guys?)

So while I greatly appreciate what it means to Get the Led Out, my youth had not wnabled me to do so in a live setting. Until last weekend, anyway. I fell into a set of free tickets to “Get the Led Out” at Penn’s Peak. Get the Led out is the east coast’s preeminent Zeppelin cover band. I haven’t written anything non-baseball related in a while and I don’t go to concerts that often so this was special to me. I’ve decided to write a review. Here it is:

All of these guys are knockout musicians. Gangly frontman Paul Sinclair does a terrific Plant imitation and maintains vocal strength all the way through a trying 2 and ½ hours of performing without a set break. Sincalir is a bit awkward on stage, but even the coolest of us (me and Henry Winkler, of course)would have a difficult time looking natural with nothing but a microphone in our hands during long instrumental breaks littered throughout these songs. While Sinclair’s shortcomings as a performer are a bit distracting, they certainly do not over shadow his prowess as a vocalist. Apparently, he also does Aerosmith stuff and I’d be willing to bet he kills that stuff too.

What Sinclair loses in his on stage persona is picked up by co-lead guitarist Jimmy Marchiano. Marchiano is easily the best performer in the group and one hell of a guitar player. The other half of the guitar duo is made up by daywalker Paul Hammond. Both guitarists played Gibson Les Paul guitars for most of the concert, with Fender Stratocasters mixed in where that surf-riff sounding plucking was appropriate. Hammond switched to an SG doubleneck a few times as well, one just like the doubleneck Jimmy Page used.

You guys have to understand that musically, guitar players are a lot like Wide Receivers are in the NFL. They need to have their place in the sun at least a few times each show to remain appeased and if they don’t get that they can become a bit cranky. As such, talented guitar players often indulge in a long, drawn out guitar solo that one might classify as….masturbatory. These guys were no exception. The two of them had a long blues riff, deliverance style solo together that lasted for a few minutes. Other than that Marchiano pretty much played by the book and Hammond’s only other infraction came during the “violin bow solo” during Dazed and Confused. For those of you who haven’t heard that song, go listen to it (just past the 2 minute mark) and then find a live version and watch that, too. The part of the song I’m referring to is my favorite part of the song. The lead guitar player runs a violin bow over his guitar strings creating a noise that sounds like hell is rising up from beneath the earth. It is fucking cool. But the sound itself does not deserve 5 minutes of my time. Hammond thought it did. Other than those two goofs they were great.

Bassist Billy Childs is very good. He looks a bit strung out on stage but while simply looking at his face may lead you to believe he is on the verge of death, looking at his fingers tell a different story. He’s probably the best bass player I’ve ever seen play live. The occupational hazard that comes with being a bass player is that people tend not to notice you. I, as someone new to critically observing live music, am no different. Sorry, Billy.

Drummer Adam Ferraioli is good too. He also engages in the obligatory solo during Moby Dick which lasts entirely too long. Ferraioli is a great drummer and it’s a shame that what I now associate with him is a fucked out drum solo. That said, Zeppelin is no picnic on the drums. The wide array of musical styling, as I mentioned above, requires the ability to play several complicated and compound beats. Ferraioli nailed them all.

The group was rounded out by super-utility man Andrew Lipke. Lipke played some guitar, some keyboards, he sang backup vocals and toyed around with some other cool effects. He is the kind of musician that bands need to be great. Let’s face it, good guitar players are fairly easy to come by. Only the top 1% of guitar players on Earth make their band great (your Hendrix, Van Halens and your Steve Howes). Even guys like Alex Lifeson, Randy Rhoades and Keith Richards are pretty replaceable. As for drummers and bass players, it’s nice to have elite options but it is not a necessity. John Entwhistle might be the best bass player of all time but he’s the last member of The Who you’d be able to name. Guys like Lipke, who can adequately play several instruments and allow flexibility and diversity in the music are the lifeblood of live music. He and Sincalir are the ones who make this band great and are the irreplaceable members of the bunch.

I would have liked to hear more songs, but Zeppelin songs are long and you can’t fit as many into a two and a half hour window as you would at a Green Day concert where songs last 3 minutes. Still, I think they should bag the look-at-me solos and do an extra couple songs. Really that’s the only improvement I can think of. These guys were awesome and I’d be glad to see them again. Here is a link to their website with touring info for the future.

Here is a video of them doing When the Levee Breaks (my favorite Zeppelin song) at the House of Blues a while back. They did not play this last weekend because of those faggy solos.



And here is Kashmir...Hammond is on the right playing the Danelectro specially tuned for Chase Utley's walkup music