Honestly, I had never heard My Chemical Romance before spinning their newest album, The Black Parade. I’d heard, like, ten seconds of a couple songs, but that’s cause I’d turn the station after about that much time. I just didn’t know anything about them. I knew a lot of people loved them and a lot of people I know hated them.

But I’m of the belief that any band new to me deserves the benefit of the doubt, no matter what I’ve heard. I ended up liking that new Mars Volta record, for example, much to my surprise. You never know what might strike your fancy. Maybe My Chemical Romance isn’t as terrible as I’ve been told. Maybe they’re just misunderstood and deserve a second chance.

Well, as it turns out, I was… right. My Chemical Romance isn’t nearly as bad as everyone says. They are so, soooo much worse.

Listen, I really, really hate to hop on the anti-MCR bandwagon here, but holy fucking shit, people. I am in shock. There is not one redeemable nanosecond on The Black Parade. I literally can’t even come up with one tiny sliver of positive energy to put towards this band. Seriously, how many trees had to die so we could have this wonderful CD booklet with artwork courtesy the obviously sleep-deprived lead singer? How much money that could have gone to starving children in Africa was spent on studio time and marketing? How many gallons of gasoline are being spent this week delivering boxes of this plastic, emotionless bullshit to stores around the world? I’m not exactly a hardcore environmentalist, but this album makes me want to join Green Peace to offset the damage I feel like I’ve done to Mother Earth just for listening to this fucking thing.

This album, without exaggeration, could not possibly be worse. Nothing, nothing could be added to nor taken away from The Black Parade that could not improve it. Seriously, throw something at me. How about we get Andrew “Dice” Clay, we record him drunk and in total darkness and isolation and let him just ramble on about nothing at all, without even knowing he’s being taped, and we take those sad, unedited recordings and just mix it into every song of the record? Just throw it into the right channel, leave it there and let the band go about their business. No explanation, just intoxicated, unfunny mumblings from Andrew “Dice” Clay in the right channel. Voila. A better record.

Or, how about we just get some crows into the studio and let them squawk for 45 minutes. As many as we can find. Starve them for a day or so and let them whine. Ka-kaaaw! Ka-kaaaw! Non-stop. Over and over again. Mix it just slightly under the vocals. Presto. A marked improvement.

Maybe everyone that hears the album gets an extremely large man at their door, unexpectedly, who proceeds to beat the shit out them for about 2 hours. Hmm. No, I really wouldn’t mind that. It might distract me from the actual record. Well, I’m all out of ideas.

This album only got worse when I read how the band got its start. Gerald Way watches the planes hit the Twin Towers and says, “I’m gonna do something with my life.” So he goes out and starts My Chemical Romance. You know what, terrorists, FUCK YOU. Killing 3,000 innocent people is one thing, but inspiring the creation of My Chemical Romance is just cruel and unnecessary. (A joke in bad taste, obviously, but I’m making a point: take the embarrassment and sheer inappropriateness of that statement and multiply it by about ten million. That’s about how queasy I felt after listening to The Black Parade. I need a fucking shower.)

I don’t really want to publish this review because that means that I have to admit that I’ve listened to it. And I would do pretty much anything to prevent anyone knowing about that. It doesn’t even matter that I hate it. Just the fact that it’s passed into my brain through my ears means that infinitely more important information has been replaced inside my mind and somewhere, deep in the recesses of my memory, little bits of this album will forever be catalogued. FUCK.

Oh, you want to know about the actual music on the record? It’s the most prentious, flat-out worst concept record I have ever heard in my entire life (it’s apparently about someone dying of cancer… maybe that song called “Cancer” is supposed to be a clue). Terrible. Might be the worst record I ever heard. How’s that?

The band cites A Night At The Opera, The Wall, and Sgt. Pepper as the major influences on the album. As if, somehow, those three records haven’t influenced every rock album of the last two and a half decades. I’m still so flabbergasted by the awfulness of this album, that I wouldn’t even know where to start in tearing each second of every song apart. I could teach a full semester, 400-level graduate course at an Ivy League university on what’s wrong with The Black Parade. Mortals are not yet capable of truly comprehending the complexity of this album’s shittiness. Millions of years of constant evolution will not bring our distant, far more intelligent ancestors any closer to really understanding how rotten this record is.

Did I mention Liza Minnelli is on the album?

Perhaps if we, as a society, pull together and, collectively, ignore The Black Parade, it will someday cease to exist it. No one buys it, no one listens to the songs on the radio, no one reads interviews with the band, everyone just pretends that it never came out. Someone brings it up, we go, “huh?” and change the subject. If you need a My Morning Jacket album, you send your friend out to get it, just to avoid seeing the album cover (be sure to warn him of the danger he is in, and thank him for risking his life to save yours). In fact, skip the “M” section of Best Buy’s CDs altogether for about 15 years. Just in case.

If we all work really hard, maybe we can ignore this album into oblivion. Someday, if we succeed, there will be no album by My Chemical Romance called The Black Parade. There will be no articles about it. Reviews, such as this one, will disappear without any human intervention from websites, print archives, and human memory. October 24th will mark the release of many albums, but not The Black Parade. Anyone who saw a My Chemcial Romance show in after 2006 will only remember them playing “Helena” and, uh, some other songs. The Black Parade will simply cease to be.

Will you do this with me? Will you ignore The Black Parade into the deepest trenches of the Universe with me? Isn’t it important? Think about it. Look at yourself in the mirror. Don’t your children, and your children’s children, deserve a world without The Black Parade? You know the answer to that question, and you know what you have to do. Good luck.

If you must, have fun watching the hilarously literal video for “Welcome To The Black Parade,” in which the band unsuccessfully attempts to sound like Queen and the Amish kid from Witness goes to hell:

For the love of all things holy, please do not stream The Black Parade at theblackparade.com. If you can make it through “Mama” without fighting off an irrational urge to take a sledgehammer to your sound card in the off chance that the song might potentially pass through your computer speakers again someday, then there is a good chance you are deaf. And, in which case, I envy you.

Bands tend to grow over time, it’s true, and few bands have grown as much since their inception as M Coast. Starting out as an Elephant 6 flagship group known as The Marshmallow Coast, the band offered up records like the low-fi Timesquare, which explored every avenue of sparseness and scratchy recordings possible. Frankly, if you played that early work against Say It In Slang, you simply wouldn’t recognize the group now.

Whereas their earlier work offered loose performances on kitchen-sink instrumentation, the 2006 model of M Coast is a tight-knit, mostly downbeat jazz-pop unit, coming off as the bastard child of Skyward, Mice Parade and Of Montreal. While the band has been through numerous lineup changes, it’s gonna be hard to beat this incarnation. One listen to opening track “Sailing Around The World” and even the most ardent longtime fans will be swaying in acceptance. With lyrics like “Who’s the one who brought you to the point? / Who’s the one that taught you how to roll a joint” sung in a cooing manner by the underused Emily Growden, it’s possibly one of the best tracks the Coast-ers have ever offered up. M Coast leader Andy Gonzales takes the lead on the saxophone-laden “I Believe In Love”, which bounces along at a moderate pace, yet almost bests the rest of the album early on.

You’re not gonna see major write-ups for Say It In Slang anywhere, I’ll assume, but it does exactly what it needs to. It’s a deceptively layered and highly enjoyable 45 minute pop record. M Coast can change their name until the cows come home for all I care, as long as the records maintain this level of poptastic quality.

M Coast - Sailing Around The World.mp3
Buy Say It In Slang from Happy Happy Birthday To Me!
Visit the official M Coast website!
Be friends with M Coast on MySpace!

The criminally overlooked Canadian pop sensations known as Sloan once put forth the lyric: “It’s not the band I hate, it’s their fans”. That’s the exact statement I used to use any time Bright Eyes leader Conor Oberst was brought up in any conversation. Each mention of his songwriting ‘genius’ was overshadowed by awkward kids in coffeehouses writing awful poetry into journals they’d one day be ashamed of, but thinking that their pain was somehow different than anyone else’s. I was also a hypocrite, as I did the exact same thing, and you probably have Kurt Cobain to thank for that. Kids need that guy with the voice of the everyman, you know? That guy who can stretch lyrical minutiae out until you’re sobbing into your iPod carrying case, but somehow gives you those glimmers of hope that leave you thinking “thank god, someone else understands”. Fandom over certain artists can make you weird and whiny, but we’d all be dead without those phases. For that reason alone, I’m not the biggest fan of Conor-bashing. Plus, that last folk record he did, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, was an amazingly good album.

Bright Eyes longtime label Saddle Creek is releasing a smattering of scattered b-sides and compilation tracks titled Noise Floor: Rarities 1998 - 2005. While this release will have Conor freaks doing cartwheels in the streets, as the title suggests, it’s just not for the uninitiated. There’s some really good stuff here, like the proto-electro “I Will Be Grateful For This Day”, the wistful “Trees Get Wheeled Away” and “Happy Birthday To Me (Feb. 15)”, a grogeous ballad from the phenomenal Drunk Kid Catholic EP. You’ll also catch one of Conor’s uncharacteristically catchy ditties in “Devil Town”, which is my personal pick for the highlight of the collection. But, truth be told… Noise Floor is a bit of a mixed bag. While none of the material is specifically bad, the juxtaposition of hastily recorded low-fi material against songs worked on in nicer studios is a bit jarring and leaves the record feeling a bit less than coherent. Not that you could expect any different, it is a compilation, after all.

If you aren’t a Bright Eyes fan, Noise Floor probably isn’t the record that’s gonna turn you around. However, it’s a really good overview of what Oberst is capable of while satiating his already large stable of fans while they wait for his next new collection of ’slice of life’ material. His world-weary warble never sounds less than genuine, and even noisily recorded fair like the acapella “Mirrors And Fevers” is always interesting at the very least. Not bad for a whole bunch of rarities, eh?

Bright Eyes - I Will Be Grateful For This Day.mp3
Bright Eyes - Amy In The White Coat.mp3
Buy Noise Floor from Saddle Creek.

A few weeks ago, you’ll remember that we gave a pretty positive review to the new Cale Parks album Illuminated Manuscript (read the review here.). We like it so much that we - as well as the fine folks at Polyvinyl - want to give a lucky reader a free copy of said album. No strings attached, we just want to give it to someone. No silly trivia questions, none of that crap.

All you have to do is email us at contest@retrolowfi.com with your name and address. It’s that simple. Heck, we’ll even give a lucky runner-up a Cale Parks t-shirt!

The deadline for entries is October 31st, 2006. The winners will be chosen so randomly it’ll make your head spin. We won’t give away your address or anything, we just gotta have it for verification purposes… you know, so we can actually send you the record.

We’re pretty excited. It’s our first giveaway, and it just happens to be for a really great record. You can’t lose! Unless, you lose. Then… well, at least you tried, right?

Cale Parks - Wet Paint.mp3
Be a friend of Cale Parks on MySpace!
Big thanks to Polyvinyl Records!

Ooooh, scary. It’s Friday the 13th. Time to let your superstitions run at a fever pitch, everyone! We’re no stranger to the pop culture legacy that this date has given us, so let’s bring up some notable pop culture stuff about this date, eh?

It’s X-Files Appreciation Day!

Our newest writer, Emily Kane, alerted me to the fact that X-Files junkies reserve this day to worship at the shrine of Mulder, Scully and X-Files creator Chris Carter. What better way to celebrate such a day than to post a fan video… set to the music of “The Monster Mash”!

Jason Lives!

Frankly, there’s never been a more fitting way to celebrate the ridiculousness of all of our silly superstitions than this next video. It’s the theme song to Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, done ny none other than Alice Cooper. It’s beautiful and terrible all at the same time, plus it’s apparently Cooper’s biggest hit ever in certain Scandinavian countries. Enjoy!