Album Review(s): Liam Gallagher and Marilyn Manson
At first, Liam Gallagher and Marilyn Manson may seem like
unlikely individuals to group together for a review—but bear with me for a
moment here.
Both come from another time—the glory days of the
early-to-mid 1990s; halcyon days of ‘real’ rock stars. Both were known for
grabbing headlines during their prime—Gallagher for his confrontational
attitude with his brother, Oasis bandmates, critics, and audiences; Manson
(born Brian Warner) for his controversial theatrics on stage and shocking
lyrics.
Both liked to do a lot of cocaine—at this point, Gallagher
is probably clean; Manson, not so much. I mean, it’s a minor miracle this dude
is still alive.
Both are past their prime—like, well past their prime. Oasis
imploded nearly a decade ago, and ceased to matter after the dead on arrival Be Here Now. For a short time, Gallagher
tried his hand at fronting a Beady Eye, a band comprised of former Oasis members;
it lasted five years before Gallagher said the project was finished. Manson’s career barely made it out of the
90s—since his heyday, he’s released five additional LPs, but none of them have
had resonated with the same shocking appeal or commercial success as Antichrist Superstar or Mechanical Animals.
And, believe it or not, both of these performers are
back—Manson, returning with his tenth studio full length entitled Heaven Upside Down, and Gallagher, with
his first ever solo album, As You Were.
AND—believe it or not, both albums are bad. Like, laughably
bad. Bad enough that it becomes an absolute chore to sit, listen to them, and
try to organize my thoughts.
* * *
Originally titled Say10—get
it? It’s a hilarious pun, because, wait for it—it is Manson’s tenth record, and
it is ALSO a white-contact lensed wink at his alleged connections with the dark
lord. A forgiving and slim 10 songs (the number 10, again!) Heaven Upside Down sounds like music
that is not made by real people, as well as the kind of music nobody actually
listens to.
Both of those statements are just my opinions—they aren’t
actually true. From what I can tell, Brian Warner and his gaggle of
collaborators are all real people, and while this may sound like a record full
of music that nobody actually sits down to listen to, people have still
purchased it. Heaven Upside Down was
released at the start of October and it found its way the top ten on the
Billboard charts.
For as aggressive as it wants to be, the industrial
caterwauling of Heaven Upside Down
falls incredibly flat, and feels sadly forced. Marilyn Manson, of 2017, is a
sad Marilyn Manson. He’s no longer shocking, and his music is no longer
dangerous. He’s been plagued for most of his career by substance abuse issues,
and a stage prop recently crushed him during a live show, which is on some
straight up Spinal Tap level shit.
Manson has never been, like, a gifted singer by any
means—his persona of a tormented, tortured, dangerous rock musician is what got
him through the 90s and into the early 2000s. Pushing 50, Manson shouts and
croaks and postures his way through this set of songs, swearing for no reason
other than feeling this song should have a few more ‘fucks’ in it, and
delivering boring and cringe inducing lyrics like, “I write songs to fight and to fuck to. If you wanna fight, then I’ll
fight you. If you wanna fuck, I will fuck you,” on the awful (and stylized)
“JE$U$ CRI$I$.” Then, later, “We’re
sucking up Snow White’s powder. White powder. Snow White powder.”
How much more uninspired can you get?
Earlier on the album, on the equally as awful (and equally
as stylized “KILL4ME”) he, presumably with a straight face, utters, “I take death threats with the best of them,”
as if Manson himself is the last one to realize just how irrelevant his is in
2017.
Musically, Manson seemed to work best during his scuzzy,
industrial, thrashing days with the Smells
Like Children EP and Antichrist Superstar. Here, as expected,
there’s nothing as unhinged or visceral sounding. That may be because over the
last 20+ years, everyone responsible for the music in the band “Marilyn Manson”
has departed—leaving Manson, the man, to find new collaborators and players.
Heaven Upside Down
marks his second time out with wingman Tyler Bates—a film composer (action and
horror movies, big surprise)—who serves as Manson’s producer, as well as
writing the music for each song and playing damn near every instrument you
hear. But the music, much like Manson’s lyrics and death rattle croaking, fail
to resonate or create anything worth remembering or getting worked up about. It’s
a turgid affair from someone who could have hung it up in 2000 or 2001 and
faded into obscurity, but has since tried to limp along. Someone is listening
though, I’m just not sure why.
* * *
There are times when I wonder if I like the idea of Oasis
and the Gallagher brothers instead of actually liking them and their musical
output. I say this because yes, sure, the first two Oasis albums are stone cold
classics, and yes I did write some verbose thinkpiece last year when the Be Here Now reissue was released, but
none of these are ever things that I, like, want to sit down and put on while
at home.
The same goes for Liam Gallagher’s solo debut, As You Were. It’s the kind of record
that makes me wonder who its intended listening audience is because it is so
boring, I have to wonder who would really go to the store and willingly plunk
down money for this thing.
Much like Manson’s album, scattered among the dozen songs on
the standard edition of As You Were,
there is really nothing memorable or interesting happening as every songs
begins to sound exactly the same as the one before it, with little, if
anything, done to differentiate from one to the other—I mean, try being able to
tell the difference between the bombastic opening track “Wall of Glass,” and
its equally as bombastic follow up, “Bold.”
It’s the kind of album that is so bad, and so uninteresting,
that you can physically feel time begin to slow down to a glacially paced crawl
as you suffer through it.
Fun fact about Oasis is that while Liam was the band’s
obnoxious, headline grabbing singer and frontman, it was his brother Noel who
did all the heavy lifting, writing nearly every song. So it’s clear from
listening to As You Were that Liam’s
songwriting and skills as a lyricist were never really developed, and at this
point, probably never will. That is clear from some of the insipid lyrics he
manages to belt out in earnest on this thing, like “Tomorrow never knows, the winds of change must blow,” from the
album’s closing track, “I’ve All I Need,” or the refrain to “Universal Gleam”—“But I’m older now, gonna show you how for
real. Gonna spit you out of my motor mouth.”
There are plenty more clichés and cloying, trite garbage
where that came from too, if you’re interested.
Strangely, rather than try to recapture the Britpop sound of
his Oasis days, Gallagher has favored incredibly slick (though vapid) sounding
arrangements and production. They’re bombastic and overdriven at times, sure,
but there’s little, if any, heart, weight, or at times, thought behind any of
these songs. Only one song, “Chinatown,” even with its eye rolling lyrics,
stood out among the pack because it provides a brief reprieve from rest of the
album by being structured around a slightly hypnotic, reserved, and slinking rhythm.
If this didn’t sound insufferable enough, As You Were comes in the obligatory
‘bonus track’ edition as well, boasting an additional three songs—all of which
are pretty on par with the how forgettable the rest of the album is.
I feel like that, before I conclude, I should mention that I
did not go into either of these records with this kind of attitude. Save for
special artists like Mark Kozelek, I really don’t have the kind of time anymore
to listen to something I know I’m not going to like, doing so in order to write
a premeditatedly mean spirited review. I went into these open minded, wondering
what a Liam Gallagher solo album would sound like; wondering if Marilyn Manson
was making interesting music in 2017.
Perhaps, somewhere in the world, there are hard core Oasis
and Marilyn Manson fans and I am just not aware that these individuals exist.
These albums—they are for those people. For everybody else, try to forget these
records exist. Go put on your copy of What’s
The Story or Definitely Maybe or
try to remember how weirded out and unsettled you were in 1996 while watching
the video for “The Beautiful People,” but how, 20 years later, it’s really not
all that shocking or scary at all.
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