Word: albums
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...paper, the Aterciopelados don't always sound promising. In a given song, the band might combine pop with Andean pan flutes and less-than-subtle lyrics reminiscent of protest songs from the '60s. Their newest album, entitled Oye, has an anthem called, literally, Protest Song (Canci?n Protesta in the original Spanish). Other lyrics tend towards love and karma and the cosmos. It sounds like it could be the worst combination of the politically trite with the New Age - but it's not. The Aterciopelados have been the critical darling of the rock en espa?ol scene for good reason. And their...
...guest appearances that Legend used on his first album to help establish himself as a top-shelf artist are definitely missed in this attempt. While not every song needs a hip-hop beat or a rapper cameo, the work of Kanye West and Snoop Dogg were definitely welcome variation on Legend’s previous album. Legend’s attempt to be truly classic and stand alone on the album is admirable, but this album lacks the frit and variety necessary to pull this...
Most of the album is fine, if a little boring, taken song by song. The problem with the album as a whole is that every song aspires to be an anthem. Nearly every track ends with twice the volume, three times the vocals, and five times the instruments it started out with. Piling on the drama time after time, however, just becomes fatiguing and a little silly, especially when it’s achieved each time simply by adding more and more of everything...
...only track whose big finish is interesting is the title track, “Welcome to the Black Parade,” which takes its cue more from “Bohemian Rhapsody” than from the latter-day Green Day, which much of the rest of the album resembles. The song starts slowly with piano and military drum and ends up with a huge rock chorus, passing though the purest punk the album has to offer. The lyrics are as dark as anything else in the album, but here the music finally lets the listener have some...
...silly. They go so over the top so often that it’s difficult to take them seriously, but they’re so deadly serious about it that it’s hard to just enjoy the drama of it all. The result is an album that’s not quite good enough for its aspirations and not quite entertaining enough to forget about them and just go along for the ride...