(originally posted on Facebook)
CAK was nice enough to say my cheesy album reviews were "so professional". Well, I overshot my mark just a bit.
Anyway, Neneh Cherry's Raw Like Sushi... I gotta get out of the 80s. So you know that thing that every rapper does nowadays on their albums where they start the song by saying their name, or just going, "Uhh... uhh... yeah..." or, "Where's my snare?" (TURN MY HEADPHONES UP!!!) Raw Like Sushi starts off with a lame drum track and Ms. Cherry saying, "I'd like to introduce you to the high-hat!" right before someone starts tapping on a high-hat. It sounded like a shitty kids music educational video where the musician says, "Now let's hear what a keyboard sounds like!" I'm sure everyone born in the 80s has an idea of what I mean.
It was terrible, and I was all set to throw down my iPod and run to my laptop to write "UGH...1-STAR!!!" and leave it at that. But this isn't about first impressions. This is about passing judgment, and I can't very well do that without giving the whole album a chance. I made it through without stopping, except for those few seconds when I lost my wifi signal. I'm interested to see if anyone with some talent had covered the first few songs on this album, because hidden underneath layers of sound effects resembling instruments and hacked drum tracks are some rather nice melodies. The rest of the album was bland and predictable, and I was sad to hear some great drum takes (one from "Frankenstein", another from "Bongolia") chopped up and left for dead in a sea of late-80s hip hop.
1-star or 2? I'm not sure. I'm annoyed by all the really terrible 80s-ness of the album, and probably my recent workload of 80s albums is starting to wear thin. But that's not really this album's fault, and in the end I keep telling myself it was bad, but I didn't really hate it. So that's 2-stars by my rules.
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