Monday, February 09, 2004
Apple Sauce (That's a reference to 'pork chops' which are like lamb chops but different, innit.)
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to review the new album(s) by Lambchop without mentioning either Speakerboxxx/The Love Below or Use Your Illusion 1 & 2. This blog post will self-destruct in approximately 200 words.
I managed it, but it was tempting. Bloody tempting, in fact, given the similarities to both / all four. Outkast wanted people to see their last release as two sides of one album despite the evidence to the contrary (did they?- at the least they wanted people to not see it as a testament to them splitting; Dre now talks about Outkast exclusively in the past tense) *; the B(r)and name of 'Outkast' being guaranteed to sell more units than either 'Andre 3000' or 'Big Boi' alone, as has been pointed out extensively elsewhere. Guns N Roses on the other hand were so keen not to have their 1991 records taken as being a double album that they released them entirely seperately, even if on the same day and with near enough the same sleeve (one orange, one blue), and with one track feauturing on both records in slightly altered forms. Whereas Sandinista! was never anything but a triple-album, The White Album never anything less than a double, Wu Tang Forever never anything less than a mess (or so consensus tells me - I never really bothered finding out to tell the truth), and Bitches Brew never less than a glorious mess spread across two fat wax discs. But what's Lambchop's new release? Their seventh album or their seventh and eighth albums? They come bound together in a card outer-sleeve (destined for the drawer alongside all the other card outer-sleeves) but in two jewel cases within. But the artwork is (almost) the same, allbeit cut in half, so each album is half in white relief, so the two would fit together if you got a craftknife out and had the inclination.
My conclusion? You'll have to wait. The review is written, but it doens't hit the shops in the US till next week, so you'll have to wait until then for it to go up on Stylus.
*I must say I probably do agree with Jess now that yes, a lot of the synergy that made Outkast so thrilling in the past has evaporated as they've divided themselves into two; but this does not mean I see either Speakerboxxx or The Love Below as a poor record. For the sake of reference, I'll note that I prefer Speakerboxxx of the two, due in no small part to "Ghettomusick" being the (only) track that best pits the two together again.
NJS
2/09/2004 08:00:00 pm
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