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Oh No Not a Music Review
Oh No Not Stereo is a band that’s going places. You can tell because they send unsolicited promo CDs to out of date addresses for campus papers that don’t review music. Luckily for Oh No Not Stereo, I snatched the Forum’s copy of their latest masterpiece, 003, from the air as it flew, unopened, towards the Story House trashcan. Unluckily for them, I went on to listen to it. I won’t pretend I listened to the entire 50 minute album because I don’t want you to think I’m retarded, but I listened to more than enough. I say ‘more than enough’ because ‘enough’ was a line I crossed about 20 seconds into album opener “Let’s Get It Started,” when whoever the hell their vocalist is first opened my eyes to new vistas of mediocrity with his ability to sound both corny and cliché at the same time as he alternately droned and shouted about a standoffish girl he wanted to bang or maybe a bro he wanted to hang with. If you care enough to figure it out maybe you should be the reviewer. At this point it became clear to me that I was not cut out for a track by track review of this album. Nevertheless, I forged on and listened to a good quarter of the album before writing this review.
003 is defined by its extraordinary ability to synthesize genres. I don’t mean like Animal Collective or The Clash either. Oh No Not Stereo manages to simultaneously showcase every bad influence imaginable. It’s equal parts frat-rock, power-pop, and emo with a generous helping of saccharine piano riffs tossed in for no apparent reason. Basically it sounds like what would happen if Nickelback’s tour bus crashed into a Hot Topic. Alongside their grab bag of influences, Oh No Not Stereo uses roughly ten times as many instruments as a normal band, unwilling to settle for the same ones two songs in a row. This is clearest on what could be construed as the album’s bright point, “Hurricanes,” which showcases their ability to play a million fucking instruments at once without making even one of them sound good. One acoustic guitar, two electric guitars, drums, keyboard, a piano, and god only knows what else blend together into
Douchey no?
a numbing wave of noise. A quick visit to the band’s myspace (where you can listen to a few of their songs) made this all the more impressive— they have only two members. Given this I think we can forgive some of their sins. After all, with only half as many members as a normal band we can only expect them to be half as good. As their own copy puts it, Oh No Not Stereo “embody all that is truly exciting about rock ‘n’ roll” and “make big, bold, beautiful noise.” I wouldn’t be humble either if I were the inventor of emo frat-pop.
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Wyatt MacKenzie
Wyatt MacKenzie, like Venus, was formed spontaneously from sea foam and emerged carrying an IBM Selectric. He is physically incapable of producing anything but the most perfect reporting imaginable and has won seven Pulitzers for his work investigating CMC cafeterias. He hopes one day to report a story so hard that it stops ethnic conflict in the third world.
Recent
6 Comments
2009-04-18
01:15:11
Ha. Wow.
At first I thought you were just being funny but then I listened to one song and realized this is maybe the most accurate review I've ever read.
Nicely done.
2009-04-18
11:15:35
Hate to be the optimist but it sounds pretty damn good to me. Entertaining review though.
2009-04-18
12:56:55
Wyatt Mackenzie, this is the first comment I have ever made on the Forum.
I feel that if I ever were to enter the music world and make a particularly William Hung/Oh No Not Stereo-esque debut, I would want you to tell me just how many packs of instant noodles you could buy, instead of buying my album. Thank you for brightening my world.
2009-04-19
14:53:08
h8 when u can't tell if a new band is rlly alt/meaningful/authentic [via album art]
seems now u have to 'listen' to a band 2 tell if they're 'good' or 'bad' or 'whatever'
Not even sure how 2 tell if bands represent my personal brand n e more, y'all.
Remember when music was alt/mainstream/indie/popular/culture/counterculture
//miss u beatles
//miss u simon & garfunkel
//miss u bobby dylan
//miss u public enemy
//miss u michael jackson [via court/insanity]
*A tribute to Wyatt*
Credits
Steve........................Carles
2009-07-01
15:56:52
HI Nice
A wold present you an article
Groove Armada Purple Haze
EQ-Lazer Delirium
Heartbeat Assassins presents Turn Me on re Fixes
Ariel G and Gabriel Marcos Aconoserme
Bob James One
Grunge
Main article: Grunge music
The grunge group Nirvana, performing live on MTV in 1992.
By the early 1990s, rock was dominated by commercialized and highly produced pop, rock, and hair metal artists. MTV had arrived and promoted excessive focus on image and style. Disaffected by this trend, in the mid-1980s, bands in Washington state (particularly in the Seattle area) formed a new style of rock music which sharply contrasted the mainstream rock of the time.3] The developing genre came to be known as grunge, a term meaning dirt or filth.3] The term was seen as appropriate due to the dirty sound of the music and the unkempt appearance of most musicians, who actively rebelled against the over-groomed images of popular artists. Grunge fused elements of hardcore punk and heavy metal into a single sound, and made heavy use of guitar distortion, fuzz and feedback.3] The lyrics were typically apathetic and angst-filled, and often concerned themes such as social alienation and entrapment, although it was also known for its dark humor and parodies of commercial rock.3]
Bands such as Green River, Soundgarden, the Pixies, the Melvins and Skin Yard pioneered the genre, with Mudhoney becoming the most successful by the end of the decade. However grunge remained largely a local phenomenon until 1991, when Nirvana‘s Nevermind became a huge success thanks to the lead single Smells Like Teen Spirit.4] Nevermind was more melodic than its predecessors, but the band refused to employ traditional corporate promotion and marketing mechanisms. During 1991 and 1992, other grunge albums such as Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger and Alice in Chains' Dirt, along with the Temple of the Dog album featuring members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, became among the 100 top selling albums of 1992.5] The popular breakthrough of these grunge bands prompted Rolling Stone to nickname Seattle the new Liverpool.6] Major record labels signed most of the remaining major grunge bands in Seattle, while a second influx of bands moved to the city in hopes of success.7]
2009-07-01
17:53:10
Hey Great news everyone
A wold present you an article
Dimension X Peerless
Bob James One
Davide Tosi Spaccacuore
High Contrast True Colors
Groove Armada Purple Haze
Pop punk
Main article: Pop punk
Green Day
One result of the 1970s punk explosion was pop punk. Championed by bands such as The Buzzcocks and The Ramones, the genre was never as commercially successful as the name may have suggested, but its influence can be still be heard in many artists today; the fusion of pop melodies, rapid-fire playing of instruments, and the raw and visceral lyrics and sound of punk rock is apparent in everyone from Nirvana to Oasis. In the 2000s, pop punk is used to describe modern rock bands with a heavy pop influence such as Green Day and The Offspring are common examples of the sub-genre, while Blink-182 and Sum 41 brought the sub-genre to new commercial heights in the late nineties to early 2000s.