Album Results
My Chemical Romance
Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge
Genre:
ROCK/POP
Label:
Reprise Records
Release date: 2004
Album Reviews
My Chemical Romance's 2002 debut was a particularly strident entry in that shifty genre of bands tortuously slamming together elements of emo, hardcore, and even metal. Rightly signed to a larger label (in this case, Reprise Records), MCR has returned in 2004 with Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. With the aid of production major-leaguer Howard Benson, they've edited the slight rookie excesses of I Brought You My Bullets You Brought Me Your Love, resulting in a rewarding, pretty damn relentless product. Ghosts wander through this Sweet Revenge, and the blood-stained lovers of its cover are no joke. "Would I die for you? Well here's your answer in spades...Got you in my sights," Gerard Way wails in "Hang 'Em High." There's also cinematic concepting here -- "The story of a man. A woman. And the corpses of a thousand evil men..." the liners intone. "You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison" begins "In the middle of a gunfight/In the center of a restaurant." Musically the cut's claustrophobic, messy, and juiced with adrenaline, just like the Tokyo crime caper shootout it was probably inspired by. Picture antiheroes leaping sideways with twin pistols blaring -- in slow motion, you know -- and you're close. Put an old At the Drive-In record on in the background, and suddenly you're shot in the arm and down to your last clip. Economic, treble-kicking production, consistently hyper, "Let's get to the next note NOW!" instrumentation, and great thematic songwriting -- Three Cheers teems with the influences MCR shares with its peers, but recent efforts from fellow travelers Thursday and A.F.I. don't have this furious immediacy, this coarseness that's so appealing. My Chemical Romance seems to have built-in restrictive bindings that prevent it from flying off the handle into quiet-loud screamo stereotyping or odd-bird stopovers into choral parts or maudlin piano. Something like "Ghost of You" might slow the pace, but it doesn't touch the railing guitars or inventively explosive drumming. Album highlights include the propulsive chain shots "Give 'Em Hell Kid" and "To the End," where layers of vocals increase urgency over modernist post-punk, or the raucous "Thank You for the Venom." There's no question of Reprise's high hopes for My Chemical Romance and Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. But its accessibility pays tribute to anger and bullet holes in black leather. ~ Johnny Loftus, All Music Guide
Track Listing
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Girls Sugababes |
| By roping in credible producers such as Richard X and peppering their songs with up to the minute electro touches, Sugababes have managed to create songs that appealed as much to the cynical music press as it did to teenage girls. Throw in a revolving door line up and a media fascination with the bands perceived moodiness and you have a recipe for the most successful girl band of the new millennium. However on "Girls", a cover of Ernie K-Does early R&B classic "Here Comes The Girls", The "Babes" lack any of the inventiveness that made singles such as "Freak Like Me" and "Push The Button" so enjoyable. As countless artists have proved over the years, there's nothing wrong with uncovering a hidden gem and putting your own spin on things; Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" springs to mind as a good example. However, you can't help thinking that The Sugababes' producers have hardly been "diggin' in the crates" to uncover "Here Come The Girls" since it has been used extensively by Boots over the last couple of years to sell beauty products. Throw in a few predictable Mark Ronson style horn riffs and you have a sub Atomic Kitten mess that tarnishes a lot of the bands efforts to be taken seriously. | |
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