Eisenhower is a difficult album to review. Every time Ive attempted to play it within earshot of others, theyve requested the music be terminated immediately for being a "buzz kill. To the untrained ear, or casual listener, however, this might come across as revelatory stuff: the musicianship is tight, the styles varied and the production is spiffy, in a soccer mom on Nyquil sort of way. However, anyone with a discerning ear will quickly catch a whiff of the foul core of this sugar coated crap snack.
By basic accounts, the only real atrocities on Eisenhower should be the barrel-scraping banalities of the lyrics, i.e., "When youre born in December, and no one remembers. But with each note an unsettling meaty familiarity emerges thats akin to consuming a gourmet hot dog but knowing that its still ground anus and gizzard with heavy garnishes. As the band goes on to reference Transformers and that "the 90s have ended while sounding eerily like the Rembrants, you realise whats going on: these guys actually did grow up on Collective Soul and only discovered Mew about three weeks before writing the album.
Most of Eisenhower is pure spam. Of the decent moments, "First Panda in Space, an instrumental, offers a slight reprieve from the fecal pop soup flooding the rest of the album. And a wretched stew it is, continually steeped in under-developed songwriting, borrowing heavily and clumsily from, while laughably attempting to blend, Pavement with Phil Collins and Animal Collective with Gin Blossoms, amongst other ill-advised attempts to disguise the Slips ambition to be the next Boston while coming across like the next Modest Mouse.
(Bar/None)By basic accounts, the only real atrocities on Eisenhower should be the barrel-scraping banalities of the lyrics, i.e., "When youre born in December, and no one remembers. But with each note an unsettling meaty familiarity emerges thats akin to consuming a gourmet hot dog but knowing that its still ground anus and gizzard with heavy garnishes. As the band goes on to reference Transformers and that "the 90s have ended while sounding eerily like the Rembrants, you realise whats going on: these guys actually did grow up on Collective Soul and only discovered Mew about three weeks before writing the album.
Most of Eisenhower is pure spam. Of the decent moments, "First Panda in Space, an instrumental, offers a slight reprieve from the fecal pop soup flooding the rest of the album. And a wretched stew it is, continually steeped in under-developed songwriting, borrowing heavily and clumsily from, while laughably attempting to blend, Pavement with Phil Collins and Animal Collective with Gin Blossoms, amongst other ill-advised attempts to disguise the Slips ambition to be the next Boston while coming across like the next Modest Mouse.