Explaining My CD Review Grades

Introduction

My CD Reviews, if you are familiar with them, typically aren't that structured. I usually assign random grades (from 0.0 to 10.0) to every song, add all the numbers up, and divide by the total number of songs to get a grade, which I round to the tenths place. But how do I come up with my grades? Why are some songs 7.7 and others 8.2? The difference between an 8.3 and a 8.4?

Basis and Weight

1. Rhythm - 20% - How's the beat? Do tempo and speed changes affect the song for better or for worse?
2. Instrumentation - 25 % - Are the guitar solos amazing? Percussion fine? Bass line all right? Etc.
3. Vocals - 20% - If the vocals are annoying, the grade will be significantly lowered.
4. Awesomeness - 35% - Looking at the song holistically...how does it rank? It might have some poor qualities, but overall is it good?
5. Comparison to rest of album - Weight varies - This is a criterion that I try not to weigh too heavily. Usually this decides whether a song is a 9.4 or a 9.5. Does this song have any qualities that make itself stand out more than the 9.4 track?

9.7 to 10.0 - Rarely given out; a truly special track
9.0 to 9.6 - High quality, all aspects
8.0 to 8.9 - Weak in only a couple of aspects maximum
7.0 to 7.9 - Average in practically all aspects
6.0 to 6.9 - Below average quality, most aspects
5.0 to 5.9 - Awful, most aspects
0.1 to 4.9 - Very awful
0.0 - Void of sound

* Important Note (Grading): I do most of the calculations in my head to come up with a final grade for a particular song. In certain cases, ones where I find that an album can be exemplified holistically by a certain grade, I will not publish individual song grades. A perfect example is 2009's Merriweather Post Pavillion. While not every song is a 10.0 (if I published grades), an album of this magnitude as a whole represents almost a change in the way a certain of type of music is looked at.

* Important Note (Bias): I have a penchant for lo-fi, noisy rock.

CD Review: What Is?! (KK+TS)

Band: King Khan and the Shrines
Release: 2007 then 2009

Comments: It's impossible for King Khan and the Shrines to not be awesome. The horns. The guitar. The organ. The drums. The voice. The King. Listening to this album is a visitation to last month's show. The studio versions don't quite match up to the high energy live performances, but certainly they fall only slightly behind. Like, for instance, the cheerleader is still very much a part of the music, even though you can't see her. The first 7 tracks are better than the last 7. That I will say.

Top 5 Tracks:
"Land of the Freak"
"How Can I Keep You Outta Harms Way"
"Welfare Bread"
"I Wanna Be A Girl"
"No Regrets"

Final Grade: 9.8 out of 10

CD Review: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

(Source: bp.blogspot.com)

Band: Phoenix
Release: 2009

* Songs below not in order as they appear on album.

1. "Love Like A Sunset" - Grade: 9.8
2. "Armistice" - Grade: 9.7
3. "Rome" - Grade: 9.5
4. "1901" - Grade: 9.7
5. "Fences" - Grade: 9.6
6. "Countdown (Sick for the Big Sun) - Grade: 9.7
7. "Girlfriend" - Grade: 9.6
8. "Lisztomania" - Grade: 9.8
9. "Lasso" - Grade: 9.6

Final Grade: 9.7

CD Review: Preliminaires (Iggy Pop)

(Source: Coming Records)

Band: Iggy Pop
Release: 2009

1. "Les Feuilles Mortes" - Grade: 8.3

2. "I Want to Go to the Beach" - Grade: 8.9 - "Well, an asshole is what you are, but that's all right"

3. "King of the Dogs" - Grade: 8.8 - "I can smell things that you can not smell...I'm the king of the dogs"

4. "Je Sais Que Tu Sais" - Grade: 8.6 - "Comme ci, comme ca"

5. "Spanish Coast" - Grade: 9.0 - "Die like a fly with no lover to sigh"

6. "Nice to Be Dead" - Grade: 9.4 - "Life's river flows and when it's dry... it's dry!"

7. "How Insensitive" - Grade: 8.1 - "What was I to do? What can you do?"

8. "Party Time" - Grade: 8.8 - "I got the slime!"

9. "He's Dead/She's Alive" - Grade: 8.0 - "She's gonna get him...by the eyes"

10. "A Machine For Love" - Grade: 9.6 - "I helped him to settle on my lap for a few seconds; he looked at me with a curious mixture of exhaustion and apology. Then calmed. He closed his eyes. Two minutes later he gave out his last breath. I buried him inside the residence at the western extremity of the land surrounded by the protected fence, next to his predecessors. During the night, a rapid transport from the central city dropped off an identical dog. They knew the codes and how to work the barrier. I didn't have to get up to greet them. The small white ginger mongrel came toward me, wagging its tail. I just turned to him. He jumped on the bed and stretched out beside me. Love is simple to define, but it seldom happens in the series of beings. Through these dogs, we pay homage to love. And to its possibility. What is a dog, but a machine for loving? You introduce him to a human being, giving him the mission to love. And however ugly, perverse, deformed, or stupid this human being might be, the dog loves him. The dog loves him."

11. "She's a Business" - Grade: 8.3

12. "Les Feuilles Mortes (Marc's Theme) - Grade: 8.2

Final Grade: 8.7

January 1 to June 1 CD Rankings

Album	Band	Grade
Merriweather Post Pavillion	Animal Collective	10
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix	Phoenix	9.7
200 Million Thousand	Black Lips	9.6
Face Control	Handsome Furs	9.5
The Eternal	Sonic Youth	9.4
Living Thing	Peter Bjorn and John	9.4
Dragonslayer	Sunset Rubdown	9.2
Grace/Wastelands	Peter Doherty	9.2
It's Blitz	Yeah Yeah Yeahs	9
Wavvves	Wavves	8.9
Sun Gangs	The Veils	8.8
Eating Us	Black Moth Super Rainbow	8.7
Preliminaires	Iggy Pop	8.7
Enemy Mine	Swan Lake	8.5
Veckatimest	Grizzly Bear	8.3
Cluster Dreams	Lone	8
Get Guilty	A.C Newman	7.9
Hazards of Love	The Decemberists	7.9
Art Brut vs. Satan	Art Brut	7.1
Beware	Bonnie Prince Billy	7

CD Review: The Eternal

Band: Sonic Youth
Release: 2009

1. "Sacred Trikster" - Grade: 9.5 - Sounds really retro.
2. "Anti-Orgasm" - Grade: 9.6 - Great Thurston/Kim back-and-forth.
3. "Leaky Lifeboat (For Gregory Corso)" - Grade: 9.1
4. "Antenna" - Grade: 9.3
5. "What We Know" - Grade: 9.1 - Crazy guitar.
6. "Calming the Snake" - Grade: 9.7 - Pretty damn distorted...awesome!
7. "Poison Arrow" - Grade: 9.5
8. "Malibu Gas Station" - Grade: 9.0
9. "Thunderclap (For Bobby Pyn)" - Grade: 9.2
10. "No Way" - Grade: 9.4
11. "Walkin Blue" - Grade: 9.4 - Lee Renaldo is a genius!
12. "Massage the History" - Grade: 9.8 - Two songs in one!

Final Grade/Comment: 9.4 - Amazing lyric right here from Kim Gordon on the last song: "Come with me to the other side/ Not everyone makes it out alive."

Post-Release No Age CD Grades

I don't feel like doing a full-scale review because it would be just a bunch of ass-kissing so here are the grades for previous No Age releases:

Nouns (2008) - 9.9

Weirdo Rippers (2007) - 9.6

CD Review: Beware

Band: Bonnie "Prince" Billy

Comments: Not going to lie, I'm not a fan of alt-country, generally speaking. "Beware Your Only Friend" is boring, despite its catchy strums and backing vocals. The farm style anthem "You Can't Hurt Me Now" is a slight improvement. The extremely slow "My Life's Work" is reminiscent of prime-time Johnny Cash. "Death Final" is better. "You Don't Love Me" is kind of fun. Okay, I'll admit it I stopped here. Bonnie just isn't my type. It would have been painful and silly for me to continue. In fact, someone reading this who is a big BPB fan is probably gearing up to type a long winded comment about how I got this review completely wrong.

Final Grade: 7.0

CD Review: Dragonslayer

Band: Sunset Rubdown
Release: 2009

"Silver Moons" - Grade: 8.7
"Idiot Heart" - Grade: 9.0
"Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna" - Grade: 9.3
"Black Swan" - Grade: 9.7
"Paper Lace" - Grade: 9.2
"You Go On Ahead" - Grade: 9.3
"Nightingale/ December Song" - Grade: 8.9
"Dragon's Lair" - Grade: 9.5

Final Grade: 9.2 out of 10

CD Review: Crack Box (Animal Collective)

(Part One of Three)

Band: Animal Collective
Release: 2009

Comments:
The first batch of tracks (A Series) were recorded nine years ago. The A Series is choppy, featuring slippery and dizzying beats behind droning vocals. It's not too distant from what the crew would produce years later, though. The 'freak' element is "flaming" (for lack of a better word) in "Jimmy Raven." "Ahhh Good Country" is a mixture of fireworks, crazy alarm-like noises, and a really shitty vocal track of all words unintelligible. "Iko Ovo" is a repetition of "what they don't see" or something like that and has an interesting increasing/decreasing drum beat dynamic. It's really intense actually. Good horror film material.

The Pumpkins (B Series) were recorded in 2001. They aren't much of a departure from what we can hear in A Series. Quite a bit of electronic influence can be heard in "Pumpkin Gets A Snakebite." There is an alienic, cutting-out effect present throughout. The last line "Oooh my pumpkin is dddddd-ddddying" is a great way to end the song. "Pumpkin's Hallucination" is still absolute noisiness, but there is a certain complexity that appears here for the first time in Crack Box. The simplistic pounding bass is still there, don't worry! The ending is freaky. Oh shit not again! That's my first reaction to "Pumpkin's Funeral." Why? Because the freaky ending of "Pumpkin's Hallucination" continues for another minute in this song. The other three minutes are okay.

CD Review: Get Guilty (A.C Newman)

Band: A.C Newman
Release: 2009

1. "There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve" - Grade: 8.4
2. "The Heartbreak Rides" - Grade: 8.0
3. "Like A Hitman, Like A Dancer" - Grade: 8.3
4. "Prophets" - Grade: 7.7
5. "Submarines of Stockholm" - 7.3
6. "Thunderbolts" - 7.3
7. "The Palace at 4 AM" - 8.4
8. "The Changeling (Get Guilty)" - 8.1
9. "Elemental" - 7.4
10. "Young Atlantis" - 7.2
11. "The Collected Works" - 8.3
12. "All of My Days and All of My Days Off" - 8.7

Final Comment/Grade: Grade: 7.9
A.C Newman is a poor man's Sam Roberts. See, I felt like I've heard most of these songs before. But I haven't. They don't really stick out. They are catchy, I'll give A.C that. The second half of the album is quite quite mediocre.

CD Review: It's Blitz (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)

Band: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Release: 2009

Comments: Karen O is pretty addicting. Amazing voice to top the rest of Yeah Yeah Yeahs excellent sound. At some points, I feel a little guilty, thinking to myself "Damn this is just about pure pop, pure 107.9 stuff." But then I realize...what's wrong with that if its damn good?

1. "Zero" - Grade: 9.3
2. "Heads Will Roll" - 9.1
3. "Soft Shock" - 8.9
4. "Skeletons" - 9.2
5. "Dull Life" - 9.1
6. "Shame and Fortunate" - 8.7
7. "Runaway" - 9.0
8. "Dragon Queen" - 8.5
9. "Hysteric" - 9.0
10. "Little Shadow" - 9.3

Final Grade: 9.0 out of 10

CD Review: Enemy Mine

Band: Swan Lake
Release: 2009

1. "Spanish Gold, 1944" - Grade: 8.2 - Annoying vocals, but good beat!
2. "Paper Lace" - Grade: 9.1 - Spencer Krug is the man.
3. "Heartswarm" - Grade: 8.6 - Bejar has talent, no doubt, but this is a tad bit too slow.
4. "Settle On Your Skin" - Grade: 9.3
5. "Ballad of a Swan Lake, Or, Daniel's Song" - Grade: 8.6 - Sounds like a traditional Canadian folk song.
6. "Peace" - Grade: 8.0
7. "Spider" - Grade: 7.8
8. "A Hand At Dusk" - Grade: 8.1
9. "Warlock Psychologist" - Grade: 8.4

Final Grade: 8.5 - This album would suck (a.k.a be really average) without Spencer Krug.

CD Review: Cluster Dreams EP (Lone)

Band: Lone
Release: 2009

Comments: "Sharpest View of the Sun" is electro-video game-esque. It reminds me of collecting gold coins in the Mario series with a soundtrack on Ridge Racers playing in the background. "Fly Fire Rainbow" would be great for a workout. There's again some video game elements -- maybe this track would work well on Virtua Tennis or the like. "A Ridge Between Mountains" right from the get-go is prime material for Ridge Racers. Even more so than the first track. "Midnight Feast" is almost Radiohead, but it's too electro to justify my comparison. Slightly boring. Overall, I'm impressed with this EP.

Grade: 8.0

CD Review: Face Control

Band: Handsome Furs
Release: 2009

1. "Legal Tender" - Grade: 9.6
2. "Evangeline" - Grade: 9.7
3. "Talking Hotel Arbat Blues" - Grade: 9.4
4. "(Passport Kontrol)" - Grade: 9.2
5. "All We Want, Baby, Is Everything" - Grade: 9.7
6. "I'm Confused" - Grade: 10.0
7. "(White City)" - Grade: 9.5
8. "Nyet Spasiba" - Grade: 9.5
9. "Officer of Hearts" - Grade: 9.3
10. "Thy Will Be Done" - Grade: 9.2
11. "Radio Kalingrad" - Grade: 9.3

Final Grade: 9.5 - A surefire candidate for catchiest album of the year. A lot of the sounds are specific to the electronica genre and this is a positive direction for the Handsome Furs to go in.

CD Review: Veckatimest

Band: Grizzly Bear
Release: 2009

1. "Southern Point" - Grade: 8.2 - Boring, yet slightly addicting because of its baroque pop/jangle elements.

2. "While You Wait For The Others" - Grade: 8.4 - Again, a very non-exciting track, but at the end it picks up significantly and finishes well.

3. "I Live With You" - Grade: 6.8 - Plain and maybe even cheesy. Sorry that I can't give any musical terms to describe how average this is.

4. "Foreground" - Grade: 8.7 - Good usage of the piano in the context of the song. Also, a strong vocal performance that screams "Bon Iver."

5. "Two Weeks" - Grade: 9.2 - Finally an end to slowness; more like the Grizzly Bear that I know and love.

6. "All We Ask" - Grade: 8.2 - Very lackluster.

7. "Fine For Now" - Grade: 7.9 - It takes four minutes for the song to actually get decent. Far...too...long.

8. "Cheerleader" - Grade: 9.4 - Nice little Vampire Weekend-esque beginning and a particularly listenable middle and ending.

9. "Dory" - Grade: 7.5 - Two minutes. TWO minutes. Far too long. And even after the two minute mark this doesn't impress me.

10. "Ready, Able" - Grade: 8.4 - Reminds me of a down-tempo, far from experimental High Places jungle tune.

11. "About Face" - Grade: 9.1 - Pretty cool guitar licks/percussion play.

12."Hold Still" - Grade: 7.7 - Thank God it's all over. Another slow song means I'm having trouble differentiating them.

Final Grade: 8.3 - Grizzly Bear played it safe this time around. With no particularly outstanding songs, the band certainly did not fail to disappoint in the "slightly above average" category. I wish the band lived up (or at the very least try to) to its previous "experimental" reputation.

CD Review: You and Me

Band: The Walkmen
Release: 2008

Comments: One of the top 3 albums of 2008, You and Me is a departure from the up-tempo jams from Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone and the vocally sensible tune of A Hundred Miles. You and Me is a lyrically brilliant and instrumentally fascinating take on minimalism. The post-punk is gone and in is a wider range of orchestral pieces -- pianos, horns, strings, and percussion. The lyricism -- in the form of a second person self-reflection in "The Blue Route" and first person lament about a one night stand in "Donde Esta La Playa" is a small sampling of the variety The Walkmen cover in this album. The imagery is nothing short of spectacular either. "Sun goes down/Moon comes up/Sky is black and blue/Here I stand/Honey, with you," makes up the last few lines of "Four Provinces," a highlight of the record speaking about never leaving a much-loved girlfriend. One of the most critically receptive tracks is "In The New Year." A man and a woman. Always together. The man's family is concerned if he and his girlfriend will get married or not. "If Only It Were True" answers their concerns. With less instrumentation and more voice, the man (Hamilton Leithouser) acknowledges it's a dream for them to be married. An unrealistic dream. In "Postcards From Tiny Islands," the thought of suicide is brought up, perhaps after an incredibly drunken night. The tempo of the song shifts with the thoughts of the singer. "Seven Years of Holidays" represent the "wild nights" of early adulthood, age 18-25. The Holidays are over; the singer must move on and start concentrating on more important, less "wild," things in life like getting married and building a home and family. In conclusion, the concept of this album -- but more so the execution in recording -- is one consisting of a path of ambiance not ever taken before. And sometimes that's just what is needed for the perfect album.

Grade: 9.8

CD Review: Eating Us (BMSR)

Band: Black Moth Super Rainbow
Release: 2009

Comments: A more electronic Dandy Warhols. Certainly like DW, BMSR relies on psychedelia and atmosphere as its principle recording components. On a track like "Twin Of Myself," I'm not even afraid to make a comparison to Fuck Buttons, a musically harsher/heavier inferior. But to say that they are similar to the likes of Animal Collective -- that's a stress. The experimental component hardly shines through on this album. The vocoder never gets old on this album. Its presence creates a spacey, abundantly ambient environment -- not exactly like a High Places jungle nor a Galaxie 500 cloud. I got a little bored with "Iron Lemonade," but that's kind of expected when the same words are repeated ad nauseum. The cleanliness of the beats is impressive all-around on this album. Call it flawless musical engineering or just a flat out awesome recording process. A change-up comes in the form of "Smile The Day After Today." The band decided it was time to cut the synths (at least for one minute) in exchange for a more folksy/dream-pop overlay. The whole no vocals for once is cool. I like the sound engineering in the next track, "The Sticky". There is some left-right speaker craziness. "Bubblegum Animals" is just kind of meh. It's not really anything new or earth-shattering that separates it from the previous nine songs. "American Face Dust," now we are talking! A lot of great instruments going playing at once. If done well, a song becomes just that much better. This one is done superbly well. Perfect for an indie/low budget high school film. WHS TV 15 take note. The album finishes off with "Untitled," a mellow instrumental. Overall, I'm impressed by what Black Moth Super Rainbow has done! I can't really reference any of their prior work because I'm a neophyte listener, but for this one I was stimulated.

Grade: 8.7 out of 10

CD Review: Sun Gangs (The Veils)

Band: The Veils
Release: April 2009

Comment: Finn Andrews and crew get the job done after nearly three years of no new releases. Mixing slow core, see "Sun Gangs," with heavier post-punk, as heard in "The Letter," The Veils reveal that variety is not covered up, but embraced. With delivery eerily similar to Editors, there is more atmosphere than concrete rhythmic pattern on this album than say Nux Vomica, the group's pre-Sun Gangs 2006 masterpiece. Yet, it's still Finn Andrews. Finn's voice makes one innately curious to continue listening to see if there are any musical twists and turns in the song. In some instances, like in "It Hits Deep," there are no sudden build-ups of energy. And that's good because I expected there to be. A pleasant surprise you could say. "The House She Lived In" is a great memory of what was so good about Nux Vomica. Then there's "Larkspur," an 8:33 track about...a plant? Okay, so maybe not. It's kind of like the "Nux Vomica" of 2009, except ten times lighter but just as epic. Nice drumming at the end. In conclusion, this is a great album that doesn't quite have the same catchiness or immediate long-lasting appeal as Nux Vomica, but still holds it own as one of 2009's finer releases.

Grade: 8.8

CD Review: Art Brut vs. Satan

Band: Art Brut
Release: 2009

Comments: Only slightly a fan of Art Brut, I decided to give this album a try. Overall, the album falls under the genre of British pop-punk. Every song basically has me thinking the same exact thing every time: yeah you can play guitar really well and you talk instead of sing. But...so what? Nothing contained within this album blows me away. Seriously. Every song sounds the same, save for a few minute variations in speed. I was a little surprised to find out that Frank Black of Pixies produced this lackluster release. For starters, I can't make any parallels between the music of Black and Art Brut. The best track on Art Brut vs. Satan is "The Replacements." I'd expect no less, honestly. I came to a conclusion about Art Brut though. The singer, Eddie Argos, annoys the shit out of me. I can't stand him 'cept for maybe for a track or two tops.

Lyrics/Meaning: 7.8 out of 10
Rhythm/Pace: 7.0 out of 10
Musicianship: 7.5 out of 10
Quality Songs: 6.0 out of 10

Final Grade: 7.1 - Éverage