Piper's Single Reviews: Issue 2

This is the second installment of Piper's Single Reviews. Each post, I will review six songs by various indie and/or alternative bands (or artists that you might chance upon when listening to an American college or modern rock station) and rate them on a scale from 1 to 10.

Placebo - Battle for the Sun
"Battle for the Sun" is Placebo's first single since their 2007 cover of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill". It harkens back to the sound of Without You, I'm Nothing, instead of the slightly more harder sounds of Meds. The band doesn't entirely abandon their recent sound, as the chorus sounds similar to that of "Infra-Red", but with the help a string section, soars higher. I'm really anticipating to see what else the band has to offer this year.
8.5/10

White Lies - Farewell to the Fairground
You probably know what artist THIS band SOUNDS similar to. It sounds JUST enough LIKE them for you to enJOY this song if you like a certain DIVISION of the alternative rock sound. Anyway, Ian Curtis fetishism aside, "Farewell to the Fairground" is not the best song White Lies has to offer (that would be "Death", which despite being yet another Joy Division rip off, is a fantastic song, especially in its single edit, which cuts all of the unnecessary fluff that appears on the album version) as it tries really, really hard to drive home that "fairground" metaphor.
6/10

The Script - The Man Who Can't Be Moved
This was a very bland song. It's slightly more bland than longtime blandness watermark "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Deep Blue Something. The lyrics have to do with a man who is waiting on a street corner for some chick who left him (probably for someone who is less pathetic). The music is like a liter rock version of The Fray (This is the bad side of Radiohead: The Script rip off The Fray, who rip off Coldplay, who rip off Travis who rip off Radiohead. This is akin to if some band back in the 90's actually had the gall to rip off Candlebox) and should slay on American pop radio (its being released here in America this month. Last year it was one of the biggest hits in the world to not appear on any American music chart) with its blandness and generic sad lyrics about some guy who actually genuinely believes his beloved will come back to him and the first place she'll look is the street corner she dumped him on (No. She'll believe he wasn't stupid enough to stay on that corner, and went home. Where he probably has a telephone).
2/10

Metric - Help, I'm Alive
Metric, the band led by erstwhile Broken Social Scene member Emily Haines - returns this year with Fantasies, their first album since 2005's Live it Out, which included the minor hit "Monster Hospital". The propulsive "Help, I'm Alive" is the album's first single (the second "Gimme Sympathy" was recently released) and is easily the best song the band has ever made. Like "Head Like A Hole" by Nine Inch Nails, "Help, I'm Alive" has two different choruses. The first is lead up to by a nice bridge built around the line "beating like a hammer" and the second features some excellent acoustic guitar flourishes. All and all, its a really great song that deserves to be a really big hit somewhere in the world.
9/10

Jarvis Cocker - Angela
This song just hit the net just as I was writing this and I just had to include it. "Angela" is the first single from the second solo album by former Pulp leader Jarvis Cocker. It's nowhere near as good as "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" from his first solo album, but its a fun little song with some good lyrics and a fuzzed out guitar which really propels the song. A good song, but I bet Further Complications has better to offer.
7.5/10

Asher Roth - I Love College
Remember when I said that Script song was bad? Well, guess what? this is much fucking worse. First off, there's the sample: It's supposed to be a sample of "Say It Ain't So" by Weezer, but Roth couldn't get the same cleared because Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo disproved. The lawyer friendly substitute sample is just as worse as if he actually sampled "Say It Ain't So". Besides, I don't see how a song about parental abandonment is a great choice to be sampled in a song that is in contention to be this year's National Bros Anthem (maybe Cuomo thought the same thing). Asher Roth - who actually named his debut album Asleep in the Bread Aisle, which i'm sure is some sort of reference to a really sophomoric joke - raps about stereotypical bro college experiences like drinking, fucking, dancing his face off (what?) and not going to class. And he has no flow whatsoever (if at least he was a decent rapper, the stupidity of the lyrics would've been passable, but no, he's not even close). And during the "chug" part, it actually manages to get worse (we are told by Mr. Roth and his acquaintances to "do something crazy" and it seems that a (most likely drunken) headstand - or was it keg stand? It really makes no difference - suffices for behavior that they consider to be exceptionally wacky). If you want proof that the American record buying public has no taste, its this tuneless attempt at rap, which actually managed to become a top 20 hit.
1/10