monitorTHIS! - December 2008/January 2009 - (Page 41)

Gym Class Heroes The Quilt DecayDance/ FueleD by Ramen Pussycat Dolls Doll Domination a&m/InteRscope PaPer Tiger T.I. proves to be fiercest before the fall You can’t go wrong with a frontman who has Daryl Hall tattooed on the back of one hand and John Oates on the other. You can get jealous because he’s dating Katy Perry, but we assure you: Travis McCoy can be trusted. His hiphop/emo outfit has taken crap for borrowing elements of ’80s hits, but they’re so canny at recontextualization that we’re happy to just bob along to the choruses like everyone else. No, it’s not the soundtrack to the next Chucky movie. (We wish.) But Nicole Scherzinger had to be hoping for truth in titling after solo effort My Name Is Nicole was infamously delayed, scrapped outright, then reconfigured into this second PCD effort. So far so good, as “When I Grow Up” is easily as catchy as Garbage’s unsung late-era song of the same name. Having Timbaland and Cee-Lo behind the decks didn’t hurt. D id yo u kn ow that “Weird Al” Yankovic rush-released a parody of T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” in the middle of October, while the song was still number one on the Billboard charts? No? That’s probably because it wasn’t very good. (Which is strange, because food songs really are—pun intended—Al’s bread and butter.) T.I. himself has no such issues delivering the goods on hit singles—“Whatever You Like” is his fourth killer in a row, following “Big S*it Poppin’,” “Why You Wanna” and “What You Know.” What he has issues with is John Q. Law. Dude will be imprisoned shortly after a sting nabbed him purchasing unregistered machine guns and silencers. But he’s trying to be a big man in the interim, not only encouraging young voters outside of the studio, but delivering some of his most introspective and thoughtT.I. ful work yet on Trail, particularly “You Ain’t Paper Trail GRanD Hustle/ Missing Nothin’.” at l a n t I c The Killers Day and Age IslanD Fall Out Boy Folie à Deux IslanD “Mr. Brightside” was one of the most overplayed singles of 2004, but we were only irritated because every song on the first half of Hot Fuss was just as good, if not better. The hype clearly got to the Las Vegas quartet, as they all but proclaimed sophomore effort Sam’s Town a modern masterpiece. Now slightly cowed, they’ve refined their unique synthesis of dancepunk and epic rock. The restrained, contemplative “Human” signals an exciting new direction. Yeah, we know they’re in the very next section, but love ’em or hate ’em, FOB are that important in today’s pop landscape. Pete Wentz and crew have managed to squeeze enough singles out of their last two albums to segue perfectly to the next, sustaining their vitality. Our only worry is that the push from Election Day to the middle of December betrays a rare lack of confidence in the material. On second thought, nah. [ dec 08 / jan 09 + monitorthis! + 41 ]

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monitorTHIS! - December 2008/January 2009 Movies Games Music

monitorTHIS! - December 2008/January 2009

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