album of the week: 10.5

the pillows

OOPARTS

avex trax (2009)

why you'll love it: you need something to fall asleep to

why you'll hate it: bland

I have a theory, the more the pillows overuse the word "yeah" - the better their albums are. The much praised FLCL era had a steady flow of yeahs. Last year's renaissance album dropped em on the two best songs. Ooparts has one yeah, and its on the best song, which is fairly mediocre anyway. Conclusion - a modern pillows album has to have at least 4 uses of the word "yeah" to qualify as good. When you put out an LP every year without every really changing your sound, you may lose your "yeah" somewhere along the way...

the pillows is a band that that puts quantity over quality quite often, so it comes to no surprise that Ooparts is pure mediocrity. On average, their yearly albums only have 7-8 outstanding songs, but this album has zero. It's the same old stuff they've been doing for a decade, but without any enthusiasm.

Usually I'm not so hard on the band for underachieving, since they've done so much good stuff in the 90s. But, last year's album, Pied Piper, was really fun. The songs had a surprising amount of energy and originality to them. Sadly, Ooparts falls into the same old trappings once again - even worse than usual this time. This whole album sounds like it was written and performed in the band's sleep. Everything from the production to the freakin' album cover is bland city.

Sorry for the recent lameness. It's been a mediocre month of music so far. Some really good stuff came out last week though, so the future is looking bright!