Meh (2.5/5)

this is one of those frustrating discs that features a collection of songs that almost all have interesting sections, but are almost all ultimately tedious and boring. it really makes you scratch your head and wonder why their taste is so uneven. the disc is still mostly indebted to sonic youth, but there are sections that are obviously lifted from nirvana, u2 and the smashing pumpkins. that sounds ok, right? except that the bulk of it is rooted in something much less interesting. i don't real know what to label it as besides generic rock music of the post-punk era, and by that i mean everything from springstein to crappy punk to emo. so, yes, it's pretty diverse, but it's mostly a diversity of blah.

and a lot of awful vocals. did i mention that yet?

as i've mentioned repeatedly, the isolated sections in the disc that are awesome are actually really awesome. they just don't win the fight against the blah. i wish they did . as it is, a decent little ep can be salvaged from the disc by isolating the front-loaded 2,3,4 tracks, as well as track 10.

ultimately, it's too bad that trail of the dead circa 1999 didn't release an instrumental disc because it probably would have been pretty good.

http://grooveshark.com/#!/album/Madonna/1288091