Review Summary: Scraping the bottom of the rainbow-spattered barrel.
If you thought
Stereos was bad...oh boy, this is a worse one, ladies and gents.
Most people here have probably never heard of These Kids Wear Crowns. Being that I live fairly close to Chilliwack, British Columbia, I have heard more about Disband's most recent winners than perhaps anyone on this website. Don't think that I'm happy about that fact, either. This is nothing short of an abomination of music. Take the ***tiest autotuned powerpop band you can think of and imagine something even worse. If you just wet yourself, proceed to hit the "Back" button before you read any more of this review.
As I said, the band recently won the last season of MuchMusic's "Disband", which is a show that gives unsigned bands around Canada the chance to play a song in front of a panel of corporate music judges. You can thank this show for gems like
Abandon All Ships! and
Stereos, two of the worst bands I've heard in recent memory. Somehow, These Kids Wear Crowns manage to outsuck them. It takes serious skill to create a band that consists of every cliché in modern music - excessive autotune, repetitive synthpop beats, overusing the words "whoa" and "yeah" at every opportunity, flaunting money/women in their videos and basically acting like obnoxious douchenozzles. What's even scarier is that this band is actually starting to build a fairly large fanbase around these parts. You should start praying that they never worm their way into your eardrums, but if you work in an environment where the local radio stations are playing in the background, this may be unavoidable and soon. Just watching one of their revolting videos will make you hate this band. The members look like they can't decide if they're scene kids or neon-clad hipster wannabes. That's enough about their image, though. Time to focus on what they refer to as "electro powerpop/punk". Whatever the hell that means.
The album kicks in with "Skeletons". Immediately, the first wave of whoas greeted me like a ***storm. The vocals are just so annoying...how the *** did Disband actually think this band had talent? I'm all for a little autotune now and then (as
Bon Iver uses from time to time), but this band took the tastefully-used autotune line that you just don't cross and they blew it into a million pieces. The whole song is just a repetitive mess, and it doesn't get any better from here on in. "This Party Never Stops" is pretty much just a self-promotional attempt at an anthem, but it just comes off sounding like they wrote the lyrics when they were hammered or something. Lines like "We celebrate and never break, and we're gonna make it to the end. We gots lots of time to spend, so we waste it on friends" just make me cringe. Next is "Jumpstart", which happens to contain the most infuriating autotune ever used in a song...just take a listen and prepare to weep for the future of music. I don't even see the point in reviewing this in a track-by-track format anymore, because all of this sounds exactly the same: like a big bag of dog ***.
There is absolutely no variety to be found here at all. Cover your eyes and just try to pick out the song titles after hearing the music. I legitimately tried and I think I was 3/11. It just embodies everything I hate about music today: it has the creativity level of a garden slug, it's catchy enough that some people will actually listen to this and like it, the band members act like they're trying to outdo Kanye's douche virtuosity, and it will undoubtedly become popular at some point in the near future. Actually, the reason I did this review at all is because I saw this CD in the "Hot New Releases" section of HMV. This is me giving you a warning: avoid this. If you see this album in a store, don't even pick it up. Turn, run away and go listen to some
Godspeed You! Black Emperor or something. Trust me, I'm doing your ears a favor. Just don't blame me if you hear this band blaring over the loudspeaker when you walk into Wal-Mart. They're coming for us.
