For reasons totally not worth getting into, I boycotted the iTunes music store for about a year or so. Around that same time, I was pretty steadily unemployed, so I stole a shitload of music.
Stealing music is wrong, sure, but it's also counter-productive to writing reviews. It gives one access to everything, all the time. It makes the idea of possibly reviewing all of that stuff so terrifying and unobtainable that a critic (well, this critic) can retreat into a stasis of Bear vs. Shark albums and paralysis.
So I'm buying my music again, both physically and on iTunes. And, yes, there are still a metric dick-ton of albums to be reviewed, but at least now they come in manageable, weekly packages.
What does this little interlude have to do with Semi Precious Weapons? Earlier this year, before anything even remotely worth reviewing was out, I was perusing the iTunes releases to see if I was missing anything cool--if anything worthwhile was sneaking under my radar. This brought me to download the hyper-affordable most recent EP from this New York based glam rock band.
The good news is this: Nothing was sneaking under my radar. Semi Precious Weapons is fucking terrible.
This EP sounds like a more vapid version of Velvet Revolver. This EP sounds like a reminder of why everyone liked Nirvana so much back in the '90s, because they killed shitty fuck-music like this. This EP is the kind of thing Randy "The Ram" would listen to if he hadn't killed himself giving Ernest Miller a Ram Jam.
I mean, this is bad, even by glam rock standards. This isn't fun or sexy or shocking or anything. If it's a joke, it's a bad one. If it's just for irony's sake, Semi Precious Weapons should fuck off. This is useless music for useless people. I wouldn't even do coke to this record. Fuck this EP and everyone involved.
I just looked over this review and I realize that I haven't really described the music very well. It sounds like late '80s rock music: lots of faux-sexy, cock-sure ham-handed metaphors for fucking. A few garden variety guitar solos. I mean, really, this sounds like a shitty version of Velvet Revolver. Or a really shitty Guns N' Roses. No, that's not right. Guns N' Roses kick ass. Like a shitty Night Ranger.
Fuck this EP. Bring on the Nick Jonas CD.