365 – New Music Daily

A couple different sides of the spectrum of late 90’s/early 00’s rock.

Only feel like reading about music you think you might like? I get it. Use these links to jump to reviews on albums from The White Stripes (Rock), Cake (Alternative Rock)

White Blood Cells – The White Stripes (Rock)

In an era of rock dominated by either Strokesian/Interpol-esque rhythmic double guitar alt rock (that’s a mouthful!) or post-Nirvana (yeah it’s called post grunge, but we know what it really is in the grand scheme of things. And yes, Frank (though, double parenthesis, maybe others have this take too, or maybe you don’t disagree with me), a ton of other Grunge was coming out at the time, I don’t care).

Starting over. In an era of rock dominated by the Strokes sound I just mentioned, or grunge sounding music, The White Stripes bring the classic rock grooves and sound back to the mainstream. Even though, yes, this album does have We’re Going to Be Friends on it (aka the Napoloean Dynamite intro song) Jack White’s riffs on this are very much so classic rock induced, and his vocals match it as well. I think they call it Garage Rock? I don’t know.

If you only know the White Stripes from Seven Nation Army and you are at all interested in really rock sounding rock (the eloquence of this blog continues to grow), you are doing yourself a disservice by not checking out their music further. Also, and I’m probably so out of the loop for bringing this up and saying “wow, that’s cool”, but The White Stripes are *a divorced couple from Detroit.

*I had… maybe… originally typed that they were siblings. Thank you Dragon Dee (who’s Dee?) for the note.

Favorite songs: Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, Hotel Yorba, I’m Finding It Harder To Be a Gentleman, Fell In Love With a Girl, The Same Boy You’ve Always Known, We’re Going To Be Friends, I Can’t Wait, Now Mary

Fashion Nugget – Cake (Alt-Rock)

Though I wouldn’t say this is necessarily the other side of the rock landscape I described earlier, I certainly would say it’s pretty fucking far away from the White Stripes in many ways.

Cake often gets a ton of shit for being “White Guy Rock”, which, OK, it probably is. Like if you listen to The Distance, that’s definitely some white guy rock. But at the same time, I feel like that moniker diminishes some of the musical quality that this band actually has. Some of these songs are really fucking good – though they can suffer from the white guy-ness that their lead self-inflicts – like dude. Nugget is fucking gnarly – so why do you have to add lines that are so central to the song about chicken mcnuggets. I also feel that 311 doesn’t get that shit as much as Cake, and 311 is eerily similar to this band in many ways. I don’t think any of you care about my 311 and Cake comparisons though.

Also if you listen to this album without knowing anything about it, which you won’t obviously… if you’re reading this… whatever, you’ll get to an I Will Survive cover that is simultaneously so confusing but also kinda good? I guess now that I’m writing this I still don’t know how I feel about a bulk of this album – there are some high points, low points, but a whole lot of ??? in between that.

P.S. If you google “nugget cake” (like I did to find the song below) you are gonna find some weird food shit that shouldn’t be a thing.

Favorite songs: Frank Sinatra, The Distance, Open Book, I Will Survive, Stickshifts and Safety Belts, Nugget, She’ll Come Back To Me