Guns N Roses – Chinese Democracy

First of all, let’s drop the pretense that this is a Guns N Roses record. It’s an Axl Rose record. The album’s saga – Axl kicking everyone out of the group and recording his escalating insanity for 17 years – is pretty well-known to everyone. But pretending it’s a Guns N Roses record has caused some people to compare it to Appetite for Destruction, which is ludicrous and unfair.

I’m not actually the biggest Appetite fan out there. It’s a great record, but I’ve always preferred Use Your Illusion 1 & 2, even though I know those albums aren’t as good. (Does that make any sense?) UYI 1 was my first Guns N Roses album; my first hard rock album of any kind, really. I got it in 7th grade, when the “November Rain” and “Don’t Cry” videos were on MTV. I got UYI 2 a year later, but I didn’t get Appetite until high school. (I wasn’t paying attention to music when Appetite came out in 1987. I was too busy watching Thundercats and listening to Weird Al.) As a result, I have spent way more time listening to the bloated, uneven, grandiose, Axl-dominated UYI albums than I have listening to the lean, punishing metal of Appetite.

Chinese Democracy is the logical progression, based on the albums mentioned above. (I’m excluding 1989’s Lies, because we all need to start pretending it never happened.) On Chinese, Axl is a bit crazier, his stylistic experimentation is a little wilder, his lyrics a little more paranoid. But where I was expecting 18-minute epics about Axl’s wistful nostalgia for the warmth and security of his mother’s uterus, all the songs clock in around 5 minutes and they’re pretty accessible. Well, some of them are accessible. My favorites are “Catcher in the Rye” and “Street of Dreams”: two of the catchiest, prettiest moments on the album. I also like “Better” and “If the World.” (Some reviewer noted that “If the World” looks and sounds like a James Bond theme, and that assessment couldn’t be more accurate.)

One welcome surprise for me was Axl’s vocals. He sounds great, and has a better range than I remember. Furthermore, the vocals are recorded and processed perfectly. (Of course, he had 17 years to get the vocals exactly right, so maybe I shouldn’t be too generous.)

In general, the record is thrilling when it works and fascinating when it doesn’t. It’s worth a listen, for curiosity’s sake.

If you’re still curious about Chinese Democracy and you want a good read, check out Chuck Klosterman’s review of the album.

The Sounds – Dying to Say This to You

By any statistical measure, I should love this album. It’s indie Swedish pop-rock. (Fantastic!) It’s dripping with 80s-style synthesizers. (Fabulous!) But somehow, it didn’t come together for me.

Some of my misgivings are probably due to singer Maja Ivarsson's punky delivery. She sneers her way through lyrics and melodies that most other singers would have prettified. While that approach initially makes the songs sound sassy, repeat listens render it obnoxious.

A larger problem, however, is the songwriting. All the songs have memorable, poppy choruses, but most of them lack matching verses. “Tony the Beat,” for example, shifts through 3 lackluster sections before finding the song’s creamy pop center.

Regardless of the album’s failings, there’s still a lot to appreciate here. “Hurt You” sounds like a relic from 1982 (in the best way possible). You might know it from the Geico commercial where the cavemen are wearing colorful leather motorcycle suits. The more up-tempo version of “Night After Night” is included as a bonus track, and I prefer it to the ballad version. In either version, it’s the prettiest melody on the album.