Info
- Artist:: Primitive Radio Gods
- Album:: Rocket
- Year:: 1996
- Label:: Columbia
- Catalog:: CK 67000
Track Ratings
| # | Title | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Women | ★ |
| 2 | Motherfucker | ★ |
| 3 | Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand | ★★★ |
| 4 | Who Say | |
| 5 | The Rise And Fall Of Ooo Mau | |
| 6 | Where The Monkey Meets The Man | |
| 7 | Are You Happy | ★ |
| 8 | Chain Reaction | |
| 9 | Skin Turns Blue | |
| 10 | Rocket | ★ |
Log
2025-12-10
i’ve heard things about this album. but for $2 i mean, i’ve spent more for just one song. i’ve spent more for nothing at all!
★ i dunno i guess women is fine. they are my favorite guy!
the lyrics only seem a little embarrassing, but maybe that’s just because the entreaty would fall on deaf ears for me.
crsthoudhwhat are those trumpets? is the marching band back?
(also now that i found the lyric sheet, “a little” is underselling it… really a lot of these lyrics aren’t great throughout)
★ motherfucker: that bass is so meaty! i want to use it as a plug! he’s also so drowned-out! his voice is so “a dude!”
★★★ yeah you know what time it is. i bend down harder, baby!
it shouldn’t be magical, but it still kinda is. it has too much latent potential to deny, even if the end product doesn’t quite hold together.
who say: it kinda does the thing that cancer of everything does, except that one shifts to minor halfway down the scale and that makes it more striking, whereas i can’t say there’s much here that i latched onto
★ are you happy. sampling was in around this time! e.g. soul coughing, odelay, the windows 95 sound recorder, etcetera etcetera. and the heavy aliasing on these samples sound like it was recorded with the last of these.
skin turns blue: wait… did he drop the hard-r? even if it’s to make a worthwhile point, that’s sure one way to earn the parental advisory sticker.
★ and god the guitar tone on rocket is so plastic. it’s so bad it’s making me derealize! and that’s so cool!
ultimately, i can’t say it’s really bad… or maybe it is. it’s hard to judge the quality of alt-rock that goes in one ear and out the other.
if i wanted to be generous i’d say that the backlash to this album is reminiscent of that for mellow gold, where people bought the album because they wanted a whole album that sounded like loser and then only one of its other songs sounded like loser.
but the key difference is that mellow gold is so inventive if you’re willing to take it on its own terms! there really is a lot to love in there…
but here? it very well may be cynical alt-rock with not-so-great production and meandering melodies – a gestalt of mediocrity – albeit with one glittering moment that points at something beautiful before faceplanting in zebra flesh.