you already know both of these things, but i can’t let them slide:
chinese democracy is coming out, the myspace page is streaming the entire album. and klosterman reviews said album beautifully for the av club.

i’m only now listening to it, as i post this. so i can’t give you a solid review of the album as a whole. but klosterman makes a great point throughout his review — the idea of this album (and ultimately, what this album represents) is more important than what the album actually is.

it’s pretty easy to say this is probably the last rock album on cd that is going to matter; we have finally cleared that era out. from here on out, it’s singles and mp3s and the notion of an album release meaning so much is practically impossible.

and you know what? this album sounds exactly like i might have expected. 14 years ago. if i could mail this back to my 10th grade self, a year after the ‘use your illusion’ albums and attach a note reading, ‘you are lucky; here is g n’ r’s new album,’ the 15 year old me would have said ‘wow, this is exactly where i expected them to go. and it sucks.’ and then would have picked ministry’s ‘land of rape and honey’ again and rocked the fuck out.

it’s not that this is bad. it isn’t. it isn’t terrible. it is forgettable. and lacks the teeth that i have come to expect from g n’ r, seasoned from decades of listening to ‘appetite for destruction.’

i can’t even grade it — what’s the scale here? my imagination? my expectations? the album itself in the context of today?

sigh.

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