I really don’t understand why The Red Hot Chilli Peppers are so incredibly popular. It’s not that their music is rubbish but it just isn’t all that great either, certainly not - in me ‘umble opinion - good enough to warrant the levels of success they’ve achieved. There is something very insubstantial and inconsequential about it and their rippled muscular poses just look stupid and forced when accompanying a song that patently lacks the balls to augment such macho posturing. I quite like a couple of their videos but to someone like me who learned how to discover music before the advent of the music video a good looking visual does not equate to a song being worth a hill of beans.
I’m giving you this preamble before discussing DOG MEN POETS and their ‘Birth Of The Cool’ (© Miles Davis) album because they remind me very strongly of TRHCP, which is obviously not a good thing. This Texan five-piece (one of them is actually from Scotland) are disproportionately pre-occupied with the idea of ‘being cool’ (did you catch that album title?) to the detriment of actually setting about the task of writing something so trifling as a song. In their amateurish hands their blend of hip hop and funk sounds contrived, as if they’ve assumed that the act of putting these two styles together is enough of a creative effort in its own right and that we should all just gape in awe at the magnificence of its rhythmic fusion. Sorry to be pedantic but some decent tunes and lyrics also go along way.
Like TRHCP much of their music sounds like forgettable mush (familiarity often engrained by endless media rotation rather than actual merit) but occasionally some ray of brilliance shines through the dross. In this case it’s the back to back tracks ‘Summertime’ and ‘Friends’ that ditch all the mannered, preconceived notions of being hip and just play out in a tuneful and diverting style. It is however scant reward for having to sit through the remainder of this weak and derivative concoction.
|
I’m all for writing about what you know but a lack of worthwhile experience and a propensity to talk about yourself collectively in the third person in such idolatery terms makes for dull reading and even duller listening. I mean is there anything less cool than actually calling yourself “cool” and doing so without even the remotest hint of irony?
Don’t get me wrong there’s nowt wrong with disposable pop music per se and music being fun and frivolous but the heavy-handedness of this enterprise just makes the results boring. Eventually their sound just becomes a blur occasionally brought into sharp focus by the simple fact that the rapping in places puts me in mind of Falco’s efforts on ‘Rock Me Amadeus’.
Which is obviously not a good thing.
|
