Send "Pale Young Gentlemen " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Cokemachineglow |
 It’s time for us to let our collective musical cat out of the soul bag. It’d do us all some good to throw open that closet door on a shared skeleton. We’ve held this in for too long already. Okay, deep breath. Here we go: Viva La Vida is a good album. Not “pretty good.” Not “okay…for Coldplay.” It’s good. It’s not a “great” album, but it’s a nice, big, throbbing, solid good one. Phew!! That was great, wasn’t it? Man, we feel so much better now. And, yeah, it helped that Brian Eno was brought on board, but laying Viva‘s whole success at Eno’s feet is just a sneaky way of only half-making the confession. And this is important, not just because repression can cause ulcers (Get my drop, Babs), but because once we admit that Coldplay, the band, can make a good record we can, without reservation, enjoy “Our History.” If we can’t enjoy “Our History,” which by all accounts sounds like a particularly fleshed-out Coldplay track, then we’re gonna go to sleep on a great little indie record by a great little indie band who’s already released a great record last year that you might’ve went to sleep on. So right out the gate you’re behind, and admitting that Coldplay’s last album was no-qualifications-good is the first step to catching back up....full text |
| Adequacy |
| The "sophomore slump" does not apply to the Pale Young Gentlemen, with Black Forest (tra la la) - their follow-up to 2007's outstanding debut - hitting the shelves on October 7th. Their first album, a creative, kitschy collection of off-the-wall tracks with vintage sensibilities, accrued wide acclaim from critics and fans alike, and this second offering, Black Forest (tra la la), is equally as groundbreaking. Stepping back from the raucous fun of the first album, Black Forest (tra la la) embraces the dreamy qualities of perfectly harmonized cello, violin, and viola, while lending itself to plucked strings on the guitar, pensive vocals, and a sweeping progression from first track to last. The maturation and development of this band is obvious and unmistakable; the members of Pale Young Gentlemen clearly have a vision for themselves. The most striking sign of this growth is the departure from really good "pop-rock" to a new type of music that is magnificently orchestrated but still sounds contemporary, the prime example being "Marvelous Design." "I Wasn't Worried" shows the most flashes of the first record, but the gorgeous harmonizing and sweet lyrics shows the band as a more refined, mellower version of themselves....full text |
| Ew |
| The only sure thing in the music business in 2008? The testosterone caddies of AC/DC, Metallica, Hinder, and Nickelback — bands who make fist-pumping anthems for the masses, and collect platinum plaques like they seem to collect hangovers and cocktail waitresses. Welcome, record buyers, to the Year of the Dude. Having moved a combined 16 million copies of their last five albums, Nickelback hardly need to call their latest CD Dark Horse; the International Rawk Constituency is already salivating at the thought of a new round of thunderous sonic shenanigans. Over 11 tracks, deep-throated singer Chad Kroeger and Co. faithfully serve up equal parts party-animal machismo (''Burn It to the Ground,'' ''This Afternoon'') and single-entendre raunch (''S.E.X.,'' ''Shakin' Hands''), punctuated by the occasional grand-gesture power ballad (''Gotta Be Somebody,'' ''If Today Was Your Last Day'')....full text |
| Guardian |
| "I think they're great," Chris Martin said of Nickelback during a radio interview last month. Different strokes and all that, but the Coldplay singer could hardly have picked a less lovable group to champion. The hilarious, parodic single Rockstar excepted, Nickelback's music reaffirms every sex-and-stupidity cliche hard rock can offer. (Chad Kroeger, the band's main dude, has even said that this album, the followup to their 10m-selling All the Right Reasons, was nearly titled Sex and Drinking.)...full text |
| Rock |
| Nickelback have never won the hearts of critics, but it’s easy to understand their appeal. On multi-platinum albums like The Long Road and All the Right Reasons, the Canadian group delivered vaguely edgy hard rock that focused on everyman sentiments, singing about common situations in emphatically emotional ways. Their new album, Dark Horse, seeks to shake up the band’s very successful commercial formula with the inclusion of super-producer Mutt Lange (Def Leppard, AC/DC) behind the boards. But Lange’s sonic tweaking can only do so much to enliven the band’s fundamental weaknesses....full text |
Pale Young Gentlemen lyrics
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