DECEMBER AMG UPDATE

After the Burial, In Dreams
Aux 88, Black Tokyo
Embryonic Devourment, Vivid Interpretations of the Void
Furze, Reaper Subconscious Guide
Grave, Burial Ground
haarp, The Filth
Killing Joke, Absolute Dissent
Phobia, Unrelenting
Various Artists, Bimexicano: Nuestros Clasicos Hechos Rock
Various Artists, Worth the Weight: Bristol Dubstep Classics

OBLIGATORY M.I.A. POST

I don't like M.I.A. very much at all. I think she's stupid (and I'm not just talking about her entitled-art-student interview persona; her lyrics are forehead-slappingly clumsy, something none of her apologists, from Robert Christgau on down, has managed to explain away or defend convincingly), I can't stand her fashion sense or visual style, and though this has no bearing on her art, I shake my head in bafflement when people call her beautiful or sexy. (In media culture, once you become famous, you get declared sexy by default, I think.)

I bought each of her first two albums, right when the hype surrounding each had built to a sustained scream. They were available very cheaply at Target; otherwise, I might not have bothered at all, especially not the second time. Arular was primitive and intermittently fun; Kala was less primitive, much more calculated (experiments had calcified into a style), and less fun. But I bought them and listened to them because I felt obligated to do so. Many writers I knew personally, and even more of the writers I read (and considered my peers/competitors), could talk of anything else. I let my intellectual inferiority complex get the better of my taste (at least, where Kala was concerned, since I'd already heard Arular and should have known better).

(This was basically a repeat of what happened to me with Dizzee Rascal, by the way; I listened to a bunch of people whose taste didn't overlap with mine at all, really, but who were getting their opinions printed in places I wanted to someday see mine. I bought both the first and second albums, and liked one or two songs, but was the guy a genius? Not unless that word has been so devalued as to be like the ribbons everyone in a kindergarten soccer game gets for trying. I learned my lesson more quickly with dubstep, because I'd enjoyed various albums on the then-Brooklyn-based label WordSound Recordings years earlier and was able to file dubstep under "similar to WordSound, but not as good, and I'm over that anyway.")

So anyway, M.I.A.'s new album /\/\/\Y/\ came out yesterday, and the big news is that Pitchfork, which had been pretty relentlessly championing her since her emergence, even letting her take over their Twitter account for a day not long ago, panned the record. Hard.

Now that I've actually heard the record, I don't agree. Indeed, I think it's her best album to date. Of course, that's saying very, very little, because as I said at the outset, I think she's stupid and I don't like her first two albums at all. But this one has some pleasing qualities. Its noisiest tracks crib from industrial; there's a sampled air-gun (you know, the kind you'd use in a garage, to change tires) on "Steppin Up" that reminds me of the Revolting Cocks' "Stainless Steel Providers," and the drum assault that opens "Born Free," before the Suicide sample kicks in, is a straight steal from the beginning of Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral. Some of the quieter, softer tracks remind me of Primal Scream's "Higher Than the Sun."

I don't know how many times I'm gonna wind up listening to /\/\/\Y/\. But if that number is higher than three, it'll be a new record.