Stupid Attention

There are a number of things that I don't like about The Cribs. I realize how biased and unfair it sounds to start a review with those words, but if there's one thing I don't want to do, it's mince words. Plus, there's an ultimate purpose behind what I'm trying to say, so bear with me. For the record, I don't hate The Cribs, rather just moderately dislike them. Their last album, 2007's "Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever" felt like a blatant grab for attention and mainstream success. In other words, all I thought the entire time I was listening to the album was how it looked for the easiest hooks and avoided any sort of innovation or attempt at creative diversity. It was moderately bland in other words, and in the sort of formula that seemed to guarantee high albums sales and mass popularity. Well, the band seems to be getting the attention I was thinking they sought around the world, save for the United States. Why The Cribs didn't hit it huge with their last album in the States is a strange mystery to me. Perhaps it was a consequence of being signed to the small-ish record label Wichita Recordings, who probably don't quite have the PR sledgehammer a major label would wield to get radio airplay. Color that issue corrected with the band's new album, "Ignore the Ignorant," finally out this week in the U.S. after an early September release everywhere else. The Cribs are now signed to Warner Bros. Records, a major label, and though I have yet to hear the band get played on the radio here in Chicago, it's probably going to happen eventually. If signing to a major wasn't enough of a PR boost, the addition of former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr to the lineup certainly caught a lot of people's attention. Marr certainly brought a lot of people into the Modest Mouse fold when he played and toured with that band around their last album "We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank," and now he's jumped ship to become the fourth member of The Cribs and adding his extra guitar to the proceedings.

So if you thought that I disliked The Cribs before, the even more intense and seemingly obvious grabs for attention only pushed me away farther. Yet I still do not play judge, jury and executioner before giving a record at least a couple listens from start to finish. So it may come as something of a surprise then when I say that I actually enjoyed "Ignore the Ignorant" from the get-go. That's not something I put lightly either, given my past history with the band as outlined above. It was just like a switch flipped in the two years since their last record, and all of a sudden they were a pretty good band. The immediate observer might point the finger squarely at Johnny Marr, saying that it must have been his joining the band that sparked a new-found creative streak. This is certainly a possibility, especially given that Marr shares songwriting credits with the Jarman brothers on every one of the album's tracks. How much he directly contributed to any single one of these songs is debatable, but given that he's credited it says a little something. For the record, I do think that Marr's work on "We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank" partly resulted in making it one of the poorer Modest Mouse albums to date, but I also like to think that Isaac Brock shares the blame on that one. But the paradoxes between how Modest Mouse and The Cribs turned out can certainly be considered interesting. Marr helped turn the sometimes extremely odd curiosities of Modest Mouse into something a bit more mainstream and bland for their last record. Now Marr has helped take the bland and somewhat formulaic pop rock of The Cribs and given it a stroke of strange. Granted, "Ignore the Ignorant" is not a highly experimental affair, but it isn't as blatant or forceful as the band's last album, which is a huge plus in my opinion.

If you're looking for some serious headrush 1-2-3 punch combos of addictive songs back to back to back, look no further than the opening three cuts on "Ignore the Ignorant". They're catchy as all hell, but with little twists and turns that sink in your ear and make them seem less obvious. In other words, if you're not a fan of big radio hits, there's an edge to these songs that make them very playable yet smarter than your average bear. These are the songs right before you get into the brash, 6 minute guitar jam of "City of Bugs," which is where you can get your best taste of Johnny Marr seriously tearing things up. You're then treated to "Hari Kari," a song that boasts some of the finest lyrics I've ever heard from the band. Again, this is surprising, and a welcome change from the frantic and unfocused pop jams of the band's earlier work. These songs are still every bit the mindless fun of the last album, but done with much more intelligence and pure skill this time around. No, it's not groundbreaking nor is it very experimental, but it's definitely boundary stretching for a band that seemed to keep themselves confined to a very tiny box that didn't seem to hold much in the first place.

To make a long story short, "Ignore the Ignorant" is essentially my album of Cribs conversion. This is the record that put my fears to rest and proved to me there was more behind this band than just a trio of pretty faces trying to write the biggest songs possible to attain worldwide success and fortune. Of course that may actually be their one singular goal, but even if it is they've done a fine job of convincing me otherwise on this new record. They've toned down their nuclear bomb-like explosive tendencies for a more appropriate and precise cruise missile, and they're better off for it. This isn't an album that will change your life, nor is it something you'll probably be considering when thinking about the best albums of 2009, but it is at the very least a solid 45 minutes of skillful fun. Up to this point, that's about all I can ask from The Cribs, and they've delivered. Now if we can just get some U.S. radio stations to start giving them some real airplay.

The Cribs- We Were Aborted

Buy "Ignore the Ignorant" from Amazon

Labels: johnny marr, modest mouse, the cribs, the smiths