I'm not sure the word, "disappointment" conveys the level to which Ted Leo has been a musical let down over the last 4 albums. Wait--I do know. It doesn't. The Tyranny of Distance was an amazing album. Heats of Oak was really good. At some point he stopped writing really good songs and started writing political anthems--only, no one was listening and everyone was there wondering when the next, Great Communicator, Timorous Me or Tell Balgeary, Balgury Is Dead, was coming.
Shake the Sheets offered a glimpse at that greatness--and i think that is probably his second best album to date. It's a solid A-. It gets political in a lot of places, but it just drives with the guitar and is a Dangerous Driving Song. Living with the Living was, in my opinion, a giant let down. Yes, you hate Bush. I get it. We all get it. Most of us agree with you. Now write a song that isn't political in nature--or maybe one where the point of the song isn't the political message. You've got a soap-box to stand on and you want to use it--and that's great--but the fundamental question here is, are you a musician or a political activist? If you're a musician, hey, great, i'll give you my ten bucks every two years and go see you in concert (unless Ted is playing without the band. I've seen him 6 or 7 times, twice without the rest of the band. I'm set on that. For life.) But if you're a political activist, I'm solid with saving my money and giving it to a cause that does direct political activism.
I said the same thing when the last album came out, but then I listened to Tyranny again and went, oh man, that is just a top 5 album for me. It is solid, front to back. The worst song on there is a B. And so i plunk down my ten bucks and buy the album and proceed to go, What did you do with all that promise?!
That brings us to Brutalist Bricks.
The haiku review is:
Promise Unfulfilled
I tire of reggae punk shit
Where's Tyranny at?
Maybe that's a bit rough, but, seriously the album sounds like someone was listening to Brit wall-of-sound pop, reggae and the Ramones and went, I-I can combine them! Yeah, PASS.
There are some songs worth listening to, but overall, i was pretty down on this album. Maybe it's my expectations. I"m kind of the same way with Weezer. The Blue Album was just out of this world--another Top 5'er--and really everything else has been down hill. Maybe it's the JD Salinger syndrome. He published a few things--short stories and novellas-- after Catcher in the Rye, but was well out of the public eye and never put out a book like Catcher again. Put in more modern terms, Salinger pulled a George Costanza--he makes the one funny joke and then claps his hands together and says, I'm out! and leaves, so everyone thinks, Wow, that George--he's a funny guy!
Obviously, making an album as good as Tyranny isn't a one and done joke, but, you get my drift. Perhaps i am so hard on TL/Rx because they started out on top of the mountain. It's hard to top standing on the summit.
Fundamentally, my issue with Brutalist Bricks is that it doesn't summit. It doesn't have a 4th gear, let along a 5th. It feels scattered and like he's trying to make a conscious move away from the politics of the last few albums, only, he doesn't know where to go exactly, soooooo he just meanders around.
Much like that last sentence.
Anyway.
Where Was My Brain and The Stick sounds like a revamped Ramones song, but less anger and screaming. One Polaroid A Day sounds like a Flight of the Concords parody of a mid-90's Brit song. Ted drops his voice into a faux-Barry White a la Jermaine and the music is soporific. Mourning In America is bad dance-rock. The Mighty Sparrow is somewhere between the revamped Ramones sound and the bad mid-90's brit pop. The best songs are also scattered but if you ignore the openings, they really work. No joke, I've cut off the first 20 odd seconds for both Ativan Eyes and Bottled In Cork they sound 1000x better. Ativan eyes is a solid rock song, and pulls itself together after a rocky opening. Bottled in Cork... The song starts off as another faux-mones song then does a complete (and seriously, i mean complete) cord, beat and tone change and becomes a late 60's brit pop song but with a better guitar solo. The song reverts to "eh"-ness with a minute long fade out of an oft-repeated call and answer of, Tell the bar-tender / I think I'm falling in love. For a minute. Really? No other lyrics on that one? Nothing? Couldn't come up with a basic rhyme? Couldn't just change the song again? When you cut 45 seconds off a 3:18 song, it gets pretty short.
Overall, if you saw this in a used rack, i'd grab it. It isn't worth buying new. There are some good songs on it, but not enough to justify the ten bucks I paid for it. Sorry--but for ten bucks, there needs to be 5 songs i want to keep listening to, or 3 that are going to own my ears for the next few weeks. This album faded into the background after the fifth or sixth listen.
Album: The Brutalist Bricks
Artist: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Rating: 6.5
Best Tracks:Ativan Eyes and Bottled In Cork
Listen if you like: Scattered albums, punk-ish, Ted Leo, brit-pop
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