[music] GRAHAM SMITH - Final Battle (March) [8 listens]

This has grown on me. KGW albums have done that before, but I always felt like I was pushing past the bad production or rotten singing. This time I think there are actually depths requiring closer attention. Not huge depths, but depths.

That said, I've been staring at the back cover and I've realized what bothered me about it: it shows Smith's room with Squarepusher, Elvis Costello and Parliament posters ostentatiously visible. (Plus maybe others I didn't recognize.) The last time Graham Smith bragged implicitly about his breadth of musical vision he was saying "bling-bling" a lot and then, you know what? he turned out to be a fine rapper in addition to his bedroom-indie-rock stuff. Whereas namedropping Squarepusher or George Clinton with regard to this album is no more than the same fatuous trendiness that got "world music" mentioned in half of Entertainment Weekly's music interviews in the mid-90s. You can't even call it dilettantism if there's no visible dabbling in the music itself.