Thirty Seconds

Don't mind me, I've just been thinking. Specifically, I've been thinking about music, and albums, and reviews of such, and what they're going to become of all of them now that you can hear thirty seconds of every track off the new Goo Goo Dolls album or whatever-you-fancy thanks to the Apple Music Store.

Example: for the last few weeks, I've been thinking about buying the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, Fever to Tell. At least, I was thinking about it until I got a chance to give it the iStore treatment and spent about six minutes giving the record a listen (which is a decent percentage of the whole, given the fact that the entire thing clocks in at around 35 minutes). And in six minutes, I was able to determine that I wanted nothing to do with it. Recycled psuedo-fem-punk, and poorly recycled at that: heavy guitars and synthesized wailing, repeated ad nauseum, with nothing in the way of originality and little distinction between the tracks. The eleven thirty-second giblets I heard could have easily been blended into a single track, with that annoying mono-quality audio effect that sounds like the whole thing was recorded over a ham radio. My friend Michael Malice, who knows full well the glory of chick punk and worships the ground it spits on, wouldn't deign to wipe his ass with the liner notes. This, THIS, is what the mainstream / alternative music press has been practically wetting its collected self in anticipation over?

I formed, hardened, and polished this opinion in six minutes. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in eleven thirty-second intervals, I was able to condemn not only an album, but the popular music group that created it and the publications that favorably reviewed it. I got 'em all, in one fell swoop. I killed them stone dead in my personal worldview in under four hundred seconds. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs = rubbish.

That got me thinking: is thirty seconds really enough time to form a responsible, cohesive opinion? What would the Beatles sound like in thirty second intervals? Would I have bought The River, and every other Springsteen album, if I could only hear half-a-minute of each track?

Thankfully, I didn't have to think too long. The Beatles sound brilliant in thirty second intervals, because they WERE brilliant, and because they knew pop hooks like no-one else before or since. And a couple clicks on the Apple Music Store had me listening to a fraction of The River's second-disk first track, "Point Blank," which had me immediately reaching for my CD album so I could hear the rest of it. Point made.

Still, thirty seconds isn't much. Doesn't allow for big musical shifts and change-ups and the like. Half-a-minute of "Stairway to Heaven" would probably leave most people shaking their heads, wondering what the fuss was about. Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones sounds incomprehensible in that timeframe, even if his "I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You" still retains a bit of its beauty.

What it comes down to is, these are previews of songs, not the song itself. And like many previews (DREAMCATCHER's tense, haunting trailer springs immediately to mind), they may, or may not, be an accurate reflection of the thing as a whole.

But I still think the Yeah Yeah Yeahs suck.