FaSho

FaSho's Top Twenty-Five of Twenty-Ten

25. White Crosses
Against Me!

Against Me! (forgive me if I omit the dumb punctuation throughout this), are basically the most successful folk-punk band of all time. That being said, they acheived this popularity by, for lack of a better word, selling out. Their last two albums have been far from the rowdy folk anthems that won my heart on their debut, Reinventing Axl Rose. What I'm getting at is, I had pretty low excpectations for this album. Excpectations that were definitely exceeded.
The album opens with the title track, White Crosses an anarchistic anthem (try saying that five times fast) which is catchy as hell, but really lacking lyrically. A theme which continues throughout the album. In the song that follows, the lead single I Was A Teenage Anarchist, lead singer, and confirmed cool mofo (I met him once ) Tom Gabel, basically renounces the beliefs that were shoveled into the band's first two albums.

I was a teenage anarchist, but then the scene got too rigid.
It was a mob mentality, they set their rifle sights on me.
Narrow visions of autonomy, you want me to surrender my identity.
I was a teenage anarchist, the revolution was a lie.

He is more or less rebelling against anarchy. Mind-boggling to say the least, but I can dig it. Once again a very catchy song, and probably the best on the album.
The album continues with this pattern for the most part, until Spanish Moss, an unexcpected love ballad. Or, at least that's what it seems like until the end of the last verse, where Gabel felt the need to stick in:

Yeah, the truth will tear your heart out.
In a world run by gangsters you're stuck standing in a bread line.


At least he's consistent
All in all, I was suprised that this album wasn't garbage. It exceeded my excpectations by a lot, but like I said before, they weren't that high.

Final Score:
7.0/10

24. Broken Bells
Broken Bells

I'll admit it, I'm not a very big fan of The Shins. I do on the other hand, like everything Danger Mouse has ever done, so I was pretty excited for this album. Turns out this isn't anything like Gnarls Barkley . This album is marginally more like a new Shins album instead. In fact, on first listen, you probably can't even tell Danger Mouse is on the album. While I would prefer a more noticeable contribution from him, it's better than the mess one would excpect from two vastly different artists. Lyrically, it's almost a concept album about a man's trek to success. Throughout the album, Mercer (of The Shins) croons about what he has done with his life. 'Life' is probably the word used the most in the album actually. There aren't really standout tracks per say, but the whole is slow realism in aural form. Goof for what it is, but honestly gets boring after awhile.

Final Score:
7.2/10

23. Fang Island
Fang Island

This album was released on June 7th, but it should have been released on July 4th. It is literally a series of fireworks exploding throughout just over half an hour of music. It's no suprise that the band members' describe their music as 'everybody high-fiving everybody'. It seems like there are a plethora of new indie bands that are incorporating classic rock themes in their music. Fang Island are no different. Fang Island lacks choruses, harmonies, and in a few tracks, words alltogether, but the explosive instrumentation starting on the opening track Daisy, and not ending until your ears have been on fire for thirty-one minutes. There are a couple points on the album, the song Life Coach for example, which actually has a pretty solid rythmn in it, and as Pitchfork put it "...could be found on a Modest Mouse album." These small portions of this short album are still far from conventional though. To summarize, Fang Island is an indie, yes indie rock band, that will blow your mind from the beginning, and not let up until the end.

Final Score:
7.3/10

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