Lisnaholic

Linkin Park - Living Things

The only thing I knew about Linkin Park going in was that I once watched them by chance on tv for about 2 mins, before I voted with my remote and changed channels.

So I was pleasantly surprised with the electronic intro to the first track, Lost In The Echo. Pretty soon though, a rap singer joins in, which spoiled the track for me. And that pattern was repeated throughout the album: some agreeable surprises in the variety of Linkin Park's styles, but I was always turned off by the re-emergence of the rap elements.

Until It Breaks is another track that demonstrated what I felt was the good and bad of Living Things: There's lots of interesting electronically modified sounds going on at first, but then that heavy-handed rapper comes in with, as far as I could judge, the same old tell-it-like-it-is swagger about urban survival on mean streets. Yawn. But then, with a complete change of tempo and mood, the track ends with some sweet Beach-Boysie singing. The whole track feels like Linkin Park in a four-minute nutshell.

I quite liked the gentler tracks, Castle Of Glass, Powerless, and the short explorations of electronic/industrial sounds, but what I took for LP's variety ultimately resolved itself into two types of sound in my mind: annoying rap and unexceptional old-fashioned pop. Enduring the former while waiting for the scant rewards of the latter didn't make a very satisfying listening experience for me, so 3/10
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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953