The Null Device Blog

The Good:

Best Comeback Album By A Band Named for a Medical Condition – Venus Hum, “The Colors In the Wheel”
It’s more IDMish than their previous work, and unfortunately laden with a few too many syrupy ballads. But the programming is excellent, and songs like “Do You Want to Fight Me” showcase Annette Stream’s newly-recovered voice.

Best Live Album featuring Missing Submarines – Thomas Dolby, “The Sole Inhabitant”
Dolby is of course best known for getting Magnus Pike to yell “Science!” repeatedly, but he’s written a surprisngly varied body of work. And he performs a lot of it, live and alone, on this disc.

Best Album That Only Took Three Years To Get a US Domestic Release – Mylo, “Destroy Rock-n-Roll”
It came out in 2003 in the UK. I mean, seriously, what’s the deal here? Still, good bouncy angular dance music with a farily tongue-in-cheek attitude.

Best Album That Sounds Nothing Like The Previous one AT ALL – Junkie XL, “Today”
Guitars, only one guest vocalist, and a lower tempo. Catchy stuff, although the vocalist he picked is not as engaging as many of his guest vocalists were.

Best Album by a band with a voice that many people consider suprememly annoying – Placebo, “Meds”
You either love Brian Molko’s ultra-nasal whine, or you hate it. “Meds” delivers nothing unexpected from Placebo, but it’s a good solid album.

Best Return to Form – Pet Shop Boys, “Fundamental”
While “Release” was an interesting, um, release, it lacked a lot of the charm of a typical PSB album. Fundamental comes back with full on disco-electronics and the return of Neil Tennant’s deadpan ironic wit.

Best Alcohol-fueled stream-of-consciousness Rambling – Caustic, “Rainbows, Puppies and Crap, Disc 2″
Matt tried, briefly, to talk seriously about his album on this “commentary disc.” The rest of us drank really cheap booze and made sure that didn’t happen.

Best Album for Nerds – The Gothsicles, “NESferatu”
Fueled by so many subculture in-jokes that you might need some sort of guidebook to keep track of them all.

Guilty Pleasure of the Year – Aneela ft Arash, “Chori Chori”
I’m a sucker for Arash and an even bigger sucker for bollywood, especially when it’s sung by an absurdly cute danish bubblegum pop star (Anila Mizhra used to sing for Toy-Box, whgose minor hit “Tarzan and Jane” can cause insulin shock). They hit us with a double-punch of a bollywood-style cover of the unfortunate canadio-reggae-hop hit “Informer” and an indecipherable but action-packed “Matrix”-style video.

80’s Nostalgia Award – Various, “Future Retro.”
Rhino gives us a compilation of 80’s classics remixed by very “now” remixers – with the exception of Sparks, who’ve been around forever. The remixes are generally good, also with the exception of Sparks, who deliver a frankly annoying reworking of Morrissey’s “Suedehead.” But hearing “Lips Like Sugar” with a throbbing dance beat and a minor-key rebuilding of Erasure’s “A Little Respect” are enough to wash you in nostalgia while still sounding surprisingly relevant.

Best True To Form Album – Hybrid, “I Choose Noise”
Returning to their big smacky breakbeats and over-the-top orchestrations, Hyrbid comes back with some catchier tunes than on their last outing. And “Dogstar” featuring Perry Farrell is a masterpiece.

Remasters of the Year – Depeche Mode, “Speak and Spell/Violator/Music For the Masses/Some Great Reward/Broken Frame/Songs of Faith and Devotion”
A close tie with the similarly remastered Cure boxsets (which admittedly have more demo material) but when it comes right down to it, the 5.1 mixes of Violator, MFTM and SoFaD are awe-inspiring. “Broken Frame” proves that no amount of production quality can save a song like “See You.” Oh, and the DVDs are pretty cool, too.

The bad:

Joy Division Clone Of the Year: She Wants Revenge
They’re not a *bad* band or anything, it’s just…should I be able to sing “She’s Lost Control” to everything they’ve ever written?

Most Irritating New Trend – digital singles with no bonus material.
If I’m going to spend money on iTunes, give me more than the radio edit.

Needs Better Remix Choices Award – Depeche Mode.
The past few singles have had some remix highlights – Tiefschwarz taking on “John The Revelator”, Goldfrapp redoing “A Pain That I’m Used To.” Then there are some mind-bogglingly mediocre mixes by Bitsream and Telex. For a band that’s had some inspired choices over the years, it seems like recently they’ve been more miss than hit.

Oh, Come on Mick Award – The Streets, “Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living”
The leadoff single, “When You Wasn’t Famous” promised good things. Okay, so Mr. Skinner is now writing about how hard it is to be a pop star, that’s a little weak, but when you’re famous for writing about your life, and you’re now a bonafide pop star, I guess that’s what you do. But…geez, did we need so many slow jams? Mike’s not the world’s greatest MC or singer – he was great at writing off-kilter lad’s lyrics and similarly off-kilter lo-fi music, so him trying to sing over more generic Neptunes-wannabe beats is rather embarassing. A few good tracks, but really disappointing after the sheer genius of “A Grand Don’t Come For Free.”

The Odd:

Teetering on the Edge of Prentese Award: BT – “This Binary Universe”
Beautiful, immersive sound, nice ambiences, skittery beats…then it segues into ambient wankathons. Not bad as an album, but really, I don’t want to have to listen to an entire 17-minute track to hear 5 minutes of the good stuff. And with titles like “The Antyktheria Mechanism” we’re already on dangerous ground.

Change in Tone – Ferry Corsten, “L.E.F.”
Seriously, the king of squishy man-trance starts trying to sound like Basement Jaxx. Results are mixed. The title track is good, other tracks just drag on.

Yawn – Delerium, “Nuages Du Monde”
It sounds like a Delerium album. It’s not bad, but nothing really stands out. They have a formula, and they’re sticking to it. At least we didn’t get the 70’s-style Carpenters-ballad like “Truly” on “Chimera.”

Most Surprising Ripoff of Kraftwerk – Coldplay, “Talk”
Yanking a riff directly from “Computer Love”, Coldplay adds some fairly standard lyrics but gives it a damn catchy arrangement. They then go on to prove that, unlike many alt-rock-ish bands, that they understand the concept of a remix by hiring JunkieXL, Francois K and Jacques LuCont to put the electronics back in.