Sometimes I really enjoy writing a music review...

As evidenced by the post below, there are times when even reviewing an album I hate can be a pleasurable experience:



Various Artists: Almost Alice

This is a week to rejoice if you are a pasty-skinned, eyeliner-wearing Hot Topic fashion victim. Everyone’s favourite moody, pretentious Art-Fuck Goth Tim Burton is releasing his latest self-indulgent Technicolor drug-dream.

In keeping with the best (and worst) predictable Burton tradition, there’s Danny Elfman providing the LAA-LAA-LAA-LAA chorused symphonic tantrum. But also along for the ride on Burton’s self-styled “sequel” to ‘Alice in Wonderland’, today’s hottest unretired Emo-Pop and Pop-Punk performers, from Avril Lavigne to Tokio Hotel, present songs “inspired” by this latest movie.

Disappointingly but unsurprisingly, most of the songs on ‘Almost Alice’ are clumsy and ham-fisted with the ‘Alice In Wonderland’ theme and imagery. One of the few somewhat inspired tunes on the album is Franz Ferdinand’s “The Lobster Quadrille”. With lyrics by Lewis Carroll, it’s probably more loyal to the author’s original version than Tim Burton’s film that shares a name with Carroll’s most famous work. If you should wonder why Kerli is featured on this CD, you need only look at the Burtonesque Gothy cover to her 2008 debut album. I’m fairly sure Tokio Hotel made it on because of how much Bill Kaulitz looks like Edward Scissorhands’ wussy baby brother.

Otherwise, I have very little good to say about this disc. There’s a predictably whiny Avril Lavigne song; a typically breathless Electro-pop track from Metro Station; an obnoxious 3OH!3 song; a typically saccharine Plain White T’s song, and an ill-advised pop-experiment by Robert Smith, he of the Cure. Grace Slick wannabe Grace Potter commits the worst crime on this album, doing an uninspired karaoke-cover of Jefferson Airplane’s classic, “White Rabbit”.

Fans of any of the collaborators on this album might find something to enjoy here. No doubt Burton’s pretentious “You Just Don’t Get Him” cinematic cultists will rush to fawn and coo over this one, or listen to it in their parent’s darkened, black-lit basement in the middle of the night while smoking clove cigarettes. Whatever. I thought it was crap.

Various Artists: Almost Alice
Disney
Steve’s Rating: 2.5/10

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