I will review your music!

I know what I'm going to do with Music Is Way Cool. I'm going to review music people submit. I'm going to review all of it. I'll have a schedule for reviewing music, and I'll make sure all of it gets reviewed. I'll even give the submitter a courtesy call as to when the music will get reviewed. Cool, huh?

The world spends on its Axl

So the eternal question- what will come first, the release of Guns n' Roses' Chinese Democracy or a democratic revolution in China- has been answered. Nowadays, the Guns of Guns n' Roses represents the hired guns Axl brings in to replace Slash, Duff, Izzy, etc, while the Roses part, of course, represents frontman and resident egomaniac/ musical genius Axl Rose. You'd think that the conflicts and the 17-year delay horrorstories that shade the album would foreshadow something like a musical 4o,000-car trainwreck. Well, actually, it's really good.

I mean, it's not something that screams "Timeless Masterpiece", but it is really good. The songs are good. They are catchy and well-written. The sound is vast and powerful. It sounds like something pieced together over 17 years, but it flows seamlessly. The rockers rock, the power ballads are pretty. When it wants to be poppy and catchy, it's poppy and catchy. There's nothing ironic or unintentional about this album's pleasures. This album is a great album. Period.

Brian Wilson- That Lucky Old Sun

Brian Wilson has something left in the tank.

25 years ago, Wilson was a crazy fat drug addict nobody thought would ever speak a coherent sentence again.  Call the long-long-long-long-awaited release of Smile the final rehab project.  Brian is making new music again- good new music.  That Lucky Old Sun has moments of Wilsonian brilliance.  It is nowhere near the sustained quality of SMiLE or Pet Sounds, but please excuse Brian Wilson for this album's surprisingly few faults.  Even forgetting what he's been through, Wilson is 66.  Add in all the history, and this album is a miracle.  It's also pretty good.

The album's premise is really corny.  It's a tribute to Wilson's native Southern California.  I could have lived without the narratives that split the music, but aside from the one where Wilson tries to use Spanish, they're not as bad as you would imagine.  The album's worst moments have to be when Wilson and the Wondermints try to rock.  They're just too clean and polished to pull off a 3-chord rocker like "Morning Beat", but even that song has a really cool motive at the beginning of the track.  Wilson is too old to sing something like "Mexican Girl".  That one could have been given to one of the younger singers.  "California Role" sounds like the Beatles' "Honey Pie" in the wrong hands.  "Oxygen to the Brain", Brian's admission to his past drug use, sounds too much like a bad SMiLE outtake.

But then there are some real gems.  "Good Kind Of Love" is the kind of whimsical pop-tune that reminds me that there is something left in the tank.  "Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl" is clearly self-referential, but it's good enough to work.  "Live Let Live" is 70's Beach Boys done right.  I absolutely loved hearing the opening of the brilliant outtake "Can't Wait Too Long" rerecorded.  It sounds exactly like the original, but better.  I wish they did the whole thing.  "Midnight's Another Day" is a beautiful ballad.  It's a little bit overdone, but it is very effective, and it fits Wilson's range.  "Going Home" sounds like a lost corn-rocker from Love You, but it works.  Love that harmonica.  The closing ballad "Southern California" is really effective, and it ends the album on a good note.  So yeah, good album.