Is that apostrophe misplaced, or is it just me?
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Artist:
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Album:Wikked Lil' Grrrls [PA] [Digipak]
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Track:Everyday is a Holiday (With You)
Ok, so I thought I just lost my mind while spending thirty minutes skipping forwards and backwards in iTunes looking for this one song that I have heard like a hundred times in the last week, but not being able to find it. I was doing my best to eliminate the impossible, focusing on what was left, no matter how improbable. I actually, for a minute, considered the possibility that the album sounded so different through headphones that I was unable to recognize the song. That was totally not right, though. Turns out that I had iTunes set up to sort by artist, the best kind of sort, but since I was looking for one of the several songs on Wikked Lil' Grrrls to feature a guest artist, in this case former Cibo Matto bassist Sean Lennon, the song didn't appear with the rest of the tracks from Esthero's album. Frustrating, frustrating stuff. Comforting, though, to discover I'm not insane, or at least that wasn't the source of this particular problem.Another equally frustrating aspect of this guest artist thing is that they tend to suck. I know it sounds like I'm sugar-coating things here, but really, every time I begin to enjoy this album, some dude starts talking, or singing, or something. My whole sense of place in the world is shook to the core when this happens, but Esthero's silky smooth grooves help me find myself again, right before some other dude starts in. And when it's not dudes it's chicks, chicks talking on phones and reading ninety second poems. There is definitely a place in this world for all of these things, maybe even a place on this album for them, but the places where they wound up aren't the right ones.While riding around town one night listening to this album, a friend says to me, he says, "I can't stay mad at this, it keeps pissing me off, but I can't stay mad." That's more of a paraphrase than the quotation marks might imply, but in any case, it brilliantly summarized my feelings on the album after spending only a couple days with it. Above are two of the most egregious examples of the album going out of its way to piss me off.But it's not all bad, in fact it's mostly good. I'm excruciatingly bad at describing why things sound good, so we'll just eschew that whole portion and accept it as sufficient for me to say that the songs are mostly good. When they are not making me laugh they are making me kind of float away from reality towards a place somewhat more appealing. I consider both of these characteristics to be hallmarks of a good musical experience, although I prefer that experience to not be interrupted every four to seven minutes, but hell, we can't have it all, can we?So, at this point, you may be asking yourself, "what was brand X, scrupulous fellow that he is, doing listening to something as sinister sounding as Wikked Lil' Grrrls? Well, that's a damn fine question you ask there. You know, someone once told me that the best gauge of ones intelligence is not the breadth of their knowledge but the quality of their questions, and with that one, my friend, you have shown yourself to be truly brilliant. So, why? Well, TroyPowers put me up to it. It was a little deal we made, strictly on the level, of course, but there is no need to go into details.Oh, and here's one of the songs that makes me laugh. I don't know if it's supposed to be funny, but it is.I think I'm gonna go see what's on TVLand...








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