Sugar and Spite

We’re going to go see My Chemical Romance at Temple later this month. So in honor of the rocking (and because I said I would, like 2 months ago), album reviews!

I’m not reviewing I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love because I don’t have it.

Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge

From what I can tell, this is supposed to be a concept album, continuing a story that began in Bullets. Which is alluded to in the front of the liner notes where is says something about 1000 souls of evil men, but the stupid CD case is in my car. And I’m not going out in the freezing-ass bitter cold to check the exact wording.

According to Wikipedia, and most of the internets, the boy loses his girlfriend to vampires and agrees to bring the souls of a thousand evil men to the devil to get her back.

This is awesome.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really hang together that way. You’ve got the half before “I’m Not Ok” and the half after. And “I’m Not Ok” is sitting there in the middle, kind of all by itself, not being really like anything else on the album. Don’t get me wrong. The song rocks. It’s what made me like them in the first place, driving along in my car and wondering who is this? Because they RULE.

Plus, let me take a second and mention the video. Mik said– “I want to watch that movie.” Me too. Also I love anything that hates on the idea of school spirit. And of course “Helena”. “Helena” is iconic and works perfectly with the theme and story of the album.

Then right after “I’m Not Ok”, you have “The Ghost of You”. Which confuses me. The placement is weird, because it seems to bring all the momentum built up in the first part of the album to a screeching halt. And then there’s the video. I do not understand this video. It’s this weird WWII USO thing, all Call of Duty, starring Gerard Way! Which, well ok. It’s weird to see everyone all dressed up in 40s gear and not even looking like themselves. But there’s also the question of, What in the hell does this have to do with your album?

I mean, sure, people make videos that don’t have anything to do with the song all the time, but those people usually aren’t making concept albums. And every single time I hear “The Ghost of You”, I think about the WWII video, and I feel confused. It’s taken me forever to try to think of it in terms of just the song and the album, without wondering what the hell D Day has to do with vampires or your dead girlfriend.

Next you have “The Jetset Life is Going to Kill You” which goes with the rest of the album just fine. Then the “Interlude” which I could skip completely. It is so soft and low key, I can’t imagine where it belongs, but it isn’t here. Come on, guys. The rocking? Remember?

The whole rest of the album after that is great. Great beginning, great ending. Weirdly mushy in the middle. Not a success as a concept album, because I couldn’t follow the story without being told what it was supposed to be, and even then I’m still losing the thread in the middle.

But it totally rocks. It’s a perfect album for rocking out in the car, nice and loud and screamy, which I love.

The Black Parade

A rock opera. You have to hand it to them. It takes some balls to come out and say you’d going to do a rock opera, cause the first thing that comes to mind is Tommy. And most albums can’t stand up to that kind of comparison.

Once again, excellent beginning, excellent ending. Slightly mushy in the middle, but not even close to as much as Three Cheers. Mik thinks that if you played with the placement, you could keep “Teenagers” on the album, but I’m not so sure. I think My Chemical Romance has a problem where they keep writing fucking rad songs that don’t go with anything else on the album. Like maybe the next time they put out an album there should be an extra CD called Fucking Rad Songs That Don’t Fit Anywhere But That ROCK!!!OMG THE ROCKING!!! And you have to love the demented circus feel of “Mama”, and seriously? Liza Minelli is on that song. That is awesome.

Also, I hate the hidden track. It’s weirdly jokey, when everything else has been pretty serious and all about the Serious Rocking and the Serious Story with the Serious CANCER. What’s with the joking?

You can sort of see where they’re going with this. There’s a lot of people who want to slag them for trying to be like Queen or Bowie or The Who. But I like all those bands. Obviously you shouldn’t try to be more Queen than Queen. That’s gross. But as a style? Hell yeah, that stuff needs to come back. Bring on the rocking.

It’s not Tommy. There’s a few places where the narrative gets a little fuzzy. But maybe they still have their Tommy in front of them. Which is totally fine. I mean, come on. “Not really in the same league as Tommy” isn’t an insult. Cause who is, really?

(Although, honestly, Ann Margret rubbing baked beans all over herself as they explode out of a television set kinda ruined Tommy for me. WTF?)

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 11th, 2007 at 7:09 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.