Man of the Year
The Future is Not Now
Loveless
From the first keyboard buzz, to the last over-mixed vocal, to all those digital squeals in between, Man of the Year is a Disney soundtrack version of The Rentals. At least the record sounds good, even if eight of the ten songs are a bore-fest. Warm guitar tones of you•ve-heard-it-before pop, and punchy bass notes that could have given the record some thickness had they been a little overdriven or distorted. This band has a propensity toward that Chorus/Flange/Tremolo guitar solo thing you hear in all those new rap n• roll songs•not that this is tuff or anything. It is very, very weak. If this band were a person hooked up to tubes in the hospital, I•d debate signing the DNR in hopes that when they woke from the coma, they•d have some great insight into life. But no, this and all the style-over-substance pop like it needs toe tags. If this makes it to MTV, which it just might, I am sure the video will be filmed in a diner, Laundromat, or bowling alley. Yeah, one of those Matchbook Twenty affairs.
Disclaimer: Loveless Records should be ashamed of themselves for naming their label after possibly the best record of the •90s. Ten years later, the album Loveless by My Bloody Valentine remains the benchmark of shoegaze recording, the undisputable heavyweight champion of symphonic bliss. This label is the welterweight hopeful of a bowl of shit. The filmic idea of •homage,• the modern art idea of •lifting,• and the misdemeanor crime called •stealing• are all done to emulate or pay tribute to greatness, not drag that idea through mud.
