Album Recommendations | mari@macintosh.garden
Artist: Nickelback
Albums are graded on a five-point scale of "Awful-Eh-Good-Great-Classic". I'm highly biased, so don't take it too seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.
Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable. Read the review.
Curb (1996)
Now wait, hold on...
Really, this one's a dead moose before I've even got my stick out. How could an indie rock critic like myself, in good conscience, not only review a Nickelback record, but give it anything more than an Eh? Could my upbringing around the stench of modern rock radio have tainted me enough to give Curb a positive review? This one sticks in my head because of its odd circumstances: it pleases no one. Nickelback fans (like much of my family) consider it too heavy and raw to care, while their detractors hate it because it's Nickelback. It's unfortunate, because Curb is a window into an indie Nickelback, something at the very least curious, if not worthy of credit itself.
Curb is heavier than much of the band's discography, given to more of an alt-metal and groove metal sound than what came later. Chad Kroeger's cousin Brandon features on drums here and actually does a pretty decent job coloring up the band's sound with his fills. With its self-lacerating lyricism that oozes 90s, it's at least a step up from the glossy misogyny of Dark Horse, and the group pulls out some rather good performances for an indie effort, especially on the thundering "Pusher" or the childishly morbid "Fly". You've probably already made your mind up on it, but I like this a bunch. Give it a try sometime.
| Essential: | Quintessential: | Non-Essential: | Rating: |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Pusher", "Detangler", "Fly" | "I Don't Have" | "Left" | Good |