iLaugh.com

Hey folks. Skipjack here, your resident music expert (for the next few hours)! And while bloggers everywhere are scrambling to make their best-of lists for 2006, I've got to get something off my chest.

Let's face it: a lot of today's music suckles the proverbial donkey taint. So while MP3 bloggers out there are scrambling over themselves to identify the top 50 albums of '06 — most of them flash-in-the-pan hippies from Montreal with "wolf" in their name — we at iLaugh have decided to identify just what it is that blows so hard, and so enthusiastically, about today's music.

Barring the really easy targets — your typical vapid popskanks; actors who release greatest-hits albums within five minutes of landing their first speaking role; and the fact that you can become famous by having the same last name as your sibling (Simpson, Carter, all those a-holes), we've decided to dig a little deeper.

Please note that this list is highly objective — i.e., you will agree with it or be mocked and/or beaten viciously.

Critical Darlings, Aesthetic Abominations
There exists a subgenre of music that I can call critic-core — music that only a critic could love, or more likely, claim to love. It can variably be called reviewer-core or acclaimed-core, despite the fact that none of this music is "hardcore," or even much firmer than rancid tofu. In fact, its core is softer than the viscid excretions of an obese Kentuckian family vacationing in Cancun.

Nevertheless, "critic-core" describes any music that gets high ratings from various reviewers (easily among the universe's most expendable human beings, needless to say) simply because it's "unique" or "challenging." These are absolutely terrible bands that nobody could possibly like unless a) they've already heard everything else or b) have a desperate need to come across as cool.

I believe this explains in its entirety any album sales by such bands as Animal Collective, Deerhoof or TV on the Radio.

Fake Accents (aka the Madonna Factor)
Why is it that so many American bands sing with fake British accents, and why do so many British singers try to sound like Yanks? I know this is not exactly a new trend (all those UK "Northern Soul" acts tried to sound like Black Southerners back in the sixties — as if white people have souls, ha!), but you'd think by now people would try something new. Like, I dunno...West Romanian might be nice?

But my analysis could be wrong on this one. For instance, I used to think Billy Joe from Green Day was trying to sound like a Brit. Then I realized it was just his lame-ass Valley Girl accent.

Pianos Suck
As the song goes, every-freaking-one really does sound like Coldplay nowadays. Five for Fighting, Keane, Snow Patrol, Athlete, Starsailor...it's all such offensively inoffensive pap.

It's a new millennium. Can we please listen to something mildly edgier than Elton John on the radio, please?

Death to Christian Rock
Pretty self-explanatory. It's bad enough to be inundated with hokey Republican talking points on the local country station, but, et tu indie rock?: Low, Creed, MxPx, Pedro the Lion, Jars of Clay...okay, nobody listens to those bands, but still.

The one cool thing, I guess, is that extreme Christian metalcore like Zao or Underoath. When they start screaming with the really hoarse, low growls and such, it feels like Satan is speaking directly to me. Which, I imagine, is not at all the point.

Your Name = Lame
There's a bunch of highly praised acts out there billing themselves by their real names, and it pisses me off. Frankly, your given name is boring and stupid and boring. What's cooler: "Norah Jones," or "The Shrieking Ass-Monkeys from Planet I Kill You"?

It wasn't cool when all those singer-songwriters did it back in the day. It's hard enough remembering such bland genericisms as Bob Dylan, Billy Joel and Lou Reed. But if you're an up-and-coming artiste and you don't have a snappy band name, how do you expect me to remember you? Because your name is "Ryan Adams"? You gotta be kidding me. Did you really think we'd all forget who Bryan Adams was? The nerve.

For some reason, half of these guys seem to be named "Ben." Ben Kweller, Ben Folds, Ben Lee...apparently, a few of these jerk-offs even got together to form a band called "The Bens." Please, could you be gayer?

But you know, even worse than a folkie loser using their real name is when a DJ does it. If your name isn't something cool like Mixmaster Bleachbone, why would I pay $65 to see you play your MP3 collection in a crowded club? Who the hell is Paul Oakenfold? What kind of self-respecting DJ would call himself Sasha? This was your one chance to come up with a name that sounds like you've got balls, despite the fact that you play glorified disco records for a living.

Even worse than singer-songwriters and DJs using their real names, is when rappers do it. This is by far the most egregious offense to the proud culture that so many white suburbanites hold so dear. If you're so unoriginal that you have to call yourself Mike Jones, you'll never get a play in my book. Come back when you're called MC Nutt-Sac and tha Bling-Pimpin' Posse or something.

But Then Again...
On the other hand, you also have yourself a whole bunch of bands with absolutely retarded names. There are far too many examples to list here, but one trend that draws my particular ire is the newfangled overuse of exclamation marks in band names.

When Godspeed You! Black Emperor did it, there was some substance there — almost something chillingly desperate about it. But the new wave of hyperbolic bands like Volcano, I'm Still Excited!!, The Go! Team, Thunderbirds Are Now!, and even !!! just piss me off. While the vastly overrated and goofily named Clap Your Hands Say Yeah don't rely on this ejaculatory punctuation, they might as well.

Just Smile and Nod
Invariably, a lot of these exclamation-heavy bands (and the blogs that love them) operate under the guise of "teaching the indie kids to dance again." They achieve this by employing cheesy handclaps, call-and-response vocals, dumb cheerleader cadences, trumpet solos, etc. I think this is an extremely dangerous road to be going down.

Do not encourage indie kids to dance. Indie kids have no rhythm. They have no grace. They also have extremely limited sex appeal. They'll just embarrass or injure themselves. Don't do it. Don't ask them to "get up and shake their asses." Indie children have no asses; I know this because they all wear inexplicably tight jeans with their ratty boxers sticking out. Just stand there, sway for bit, then write about it on MySpace like you've always done. For your own safety.

The Weasel Goes Pop
While they're trying to inject dance music into indie rock, there's also a creeping pop vibe I find worrisome. Lately, it seems a lot of "indie" is just pop that's actually too poppy for the radio: see such nauseating acts as The Islands or The Pipettes. The absolute worst of these are those cutesy duettists like the New Pornographers (ooh, badass name!) or the Postal Service. Combine the dude from stellastarr* with the chick from the Pornographers and you've got an even cheesier incarnation of the B52s, with seven percent more lame. Have a male lead or a female lead; none of this Captain and Tenille bullcrap.

Frankly, "cuteness" and "pop sensibility" have no place in either indie or rock music — no, not in this day and age. Not after nine-motherf**ing-eleven, mister. Pop is dead. If you truly refuse to get past the coffee-ad-jingle singalong goofiness of The Beatles, then fine. Buy the stuff. Just take it off "alternative" radio and shove it into the easy listening bin where it belongs.