The lamest thing about the “been there done that” attitude thing in music is the LAME names that appear in cycles over the years. It’s not enough to have a name that is a noun or an expression of importance no many bands name themselves after really stupid things to show how blas they are about the world … especially in the alt-rock scene.

You could come up with a clever way of calling yourself semen like “Pearl Jam” this always irritates me. Another example of clever grossness: “the Meat Beat Manifesto.”

Another lame way to name your band is if there are already several bands that have part of your name. Right now the animal of choice is a “Wolf” as in “Wolf Parade,” “Wolf Mother” and “Wolf Eyes.” The expression of choice is “Yeah” as in “Clap Your Hands Say Yeah” or “The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.” I get them confused and as a result I don’t like to listen to them.

Right now another name fad is meta-irony. If you’re too lazy to click on the link and read all the way down to “recent developments,” meta-irony is when you’re being ironic about the fact that you are not being ironic or you are being so obviously ironic that it’s not ironic at all … but there is irony in the situation of its lack of or over-exposure of irony. Confused? Well that’s the point … and if you’re not confused it’s because you’re in the “know” wink wink you’re one of the cool kids who really gets it … while presumably no one else does.

Meta-irony is today what sarcasm was in the 19th Century. My name-sake Thomas Carlyle called sarcasm “the language of the devil.” He wasn’t wrong by the way … just pissed off and bitter and he didn’t live in the 21st Century but if he did he would join me on this holy crusade against meta-irony.

So this finally brings me to the band I really want to talk about. “So what the fuck were the previous five paragraphs about then?” I hear you asking. Well I really hate the name “the Eagles of Death Metal” and I had to make this very clear. Also I really hate the name of their last album “Peace Love and Death Metal.”

To this band I would say: “Okay har har you don’t sound like the Eagles and you don’t play Death Metal very funny dude.” And yeah you’ve shown us all you don’t care about record sales because your oh-so-clever-marketing has excluded everyone aside from fans of meta-irony and nave 14 year olds who were brought in by false advertising.

Congratulations you’re a dick!

So quite by accident I heard one of their songs and was taken in almost immediately with how good their music was. I was dismayed to discover it was the Eagles of Death Metal I didn’t want to like them. I hated the name and I had always been able to hate a band based solely on the name before how dare they smash my preconceptions and prejudices like this. This really pisses me off.

They should have called the band “The traditional-bluesy-ass-kicking-hard-rockers” which would have been just as annoying, but at least a greater indication of what to expect. Their music is an excellent mish-mash of the American blues hard-rock.

The thing that made White Stripes “Elephant” so great was that 1970s bluesy hard rock sound so well encapsulated by songs like “7 Nation Army.” That Detroit Rock City sound of Ted Nugent and Kiss coming back from the grave was what so many were happy to see return and this album recreates that sound excellently. I have no idea if they are from Detroit and I don’t really care … (I am not being ironic by the way - so don’t be so paranoid).

Another band that is slightly reflected by this music is Canned Heat so take that 1970s arena rock listed above add some clarity and better mixing bringing it slightly closer to original blues. That bluesy Americana is carried over so distilled and premeditated it lacks all irony by the way … which is another reason to ditch the name. Doing the full spectrum of Americana the lead singer even drops down into an Elvis drawl … and he does it well. The whole album could very well be an exercise in playing pretend but just like Kurt Vonnegut taught us: Be careful what you pretend to be, because if you do it well enough that is in fact what you are. (I am very loosely paraphrasing it here from the film no less and not the book)

For the record: I am breaking a bunch of rules in this post. Critics doing reviews are never supposed to review old music and this album is almost a year old. This name generation thing for bands is a pattern though that I had to get off of my chest with the above rant … AND I am eagerly anticipating the new album that is due out in three weeks … and if I tell you that this album is going to rock then I will doom it to SUCK! There are a countless number of sophomore albums that suck after a promising debut so any promise of the new album being good would be the kiss of death metal >ahem< … and maybe this would make me happy because I could hate them again.

The Band of the moment is She Wants Revenge (SWR) and similar to my last music post it’s all about redoing what you’ve never heard before (but claimed you had). Many music critics have compared SWR to Joy Division, but to be honest Joy Division is the musical equivalent of Jean-Paul Sartre… oooooh sure you’ve read all of his works… rrrriiiight… And I bet you claim to have read all of “Finigan’sWake” as well.

Well I call bullshit.

You may know about Sartre and you may have read Dubliners… but that is really not the same thing… is it? No… no it’s not.

As for Joy Division many people have heard “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and maybe their goth friend they had in college made them also listen to a couple of other singles, but as for really having heard it all or honestly knowing them… well that is reserved for the black-nail polish shoe gazer crowd… or those in recovery… >ahem<.

Anyway this debut album: It's great... and yes the lead singer sounds a bit like Ian Curtis, but SWR claims to be influenced by the Cure, Prince and Madonna in short the popular music of the 80s, but no mention of obviously similar bands like Sisters of Mercy, Depeche Mode or New Order (what became of Joy Division after Ian Curtis killed himself in 1980). Now I am tempted to call bullshit once again on the two members of this band, Justin Warfield and Adam Bravin (AKA DJ Adam 12)… but I will, in my great merciful self, grant them the benefit of the doubt… which leads to a more intriguing possibility: that this type of 80s gothic music is nothing more than a natural conclusion of taking the sound of that decade in raw form. Maybe Sisters of Mercy and Christian Death were merely taking what they heard and making their own obvious conclusions. If this is the case then SWR can claim rediscovery of traditional 80s goth and call it their own. I don’t mind I am glad they have brought it back.

The lyrics of SWR’s album are what I would describe as intentionally overt - bordering on clich and at first I thought maybe they were writing them in jest, but no they claim to be serious. They are on a mission to tell stories of love, obsession, sex and depravity in a very direct way.

Take the excellent song “Sister,” it is the story of a boy who meets a girl, who is a bit more screwed up than he bargained for… but goes for it anyway. He goes back to her place only to find the walls of her bedroom covered with Christian iconography and tells him she’s a “very bad bad girl.” When the narrator is still struggling with his consciousness she breaks him down:

She closed her eyes and said quit the talking
You can hurt me do whatever you like

We have all made poor decisions like this… or fantasized about making them… or at least wished we had made them.

Avoid this album if you always hated New Order or have never celebrated depravity… buy it otherwise.