1 out of 5

Label: 8 ft. Records?

Producer: John Congleton, in part (the only part I care about)

Uuhhhh I have chills from how annoyed I am at this album right now.  My eyes almost rolled out of my head several times upon listening, and I kept telling myself things weren’t going to change, just shut it off, shut it off, but I figured I owed it to something or other to at least make it through the album and I’m duffin’ glad I did, Ms. Palmer, because the latter half of this obnoxiousity actually started to change my opinion just enough to maybe understand the way to listen to the album, until the fucking FOUR MINUTE LONG final bustier-enhanced fuckpiece called ‘Ukulele Anthem.’  God bless my listening tenacity, because it confirmed my dislike of the album.

Pant pant.

Okay, look – I got this for free due to a whole Kickstarter / Bandcamp thing, and I appreciate that.  I’m also… I’m not the audience for this, and I can appreciate that too.  There IS an audience for this, and Amanda Palmer knows what they want, so, well, that’s fine.  Let’s just let this rating stand for me.

I stumbled across this because some of it was produced by John Congleton.  John isn’t a guaranteed producer – he doesn’t shape a band’s sound, to my ear – or rather assist a band to find their sound – but given the appropriate tools and environment he can really flesh out an album, such as with 90 Day Men.  Otherwise he does one of two things – seems to take a back seat and just give it a low-end heavy Congleton sheen, or gives the thumbs up to the marching band and records and mixes.  This album seems like the latter, and it’s when Palmer is more music-ed up that the album seems okay… I mean, not really, ’cause I hate the “I love to fight and fuck and tattoos and shit and hate me or love me I’m a bitch ya’ll music is great I’ma name drop ’cause I’m so dumb” cover-it-all personality, which isn’t a chick-specific thing, tons of guy artists obviously do that nonsense also, but this whole cabaret shtick is the femme version of it.  So when she’s singing about being a rock star and hometown pride, I get a little itchy inside, and feel like I’m sitting in the backseat of some high school friend’s car while being driven to a pool party somewhere, this tune blaring as an anthem for all the many, many “different” kids out there  uuuuugggghhhhh      ugh guh guh spasm  bbbut there would be moments of spice to some songs that didn’t just fall back on new-wave kitschy bullshit, and those moments worked.  Like, I actually would tap my toe to those moments.

Until a ballad; until she remembers to put her game face back on.

Don’t get me started on the Ukulele Anthem.