WZRD: WZRD - Album Review

WZRD
WZRD
Rating: Jeez Lady

There is nothing wrong with attempting a new genre or adapting a genre to your own sound; plenty of people have stepped outside their comfort zones and have produced amazing music. U2 embraced electronic textures and club beats on Achtung Baby, k.d. Lang moved from country right on over to adult contemporary with Ingenue, or a current band like Metronomy that has moved from IDM on their first record to their current style of slick, urban pop. In all cases, despite what genre the band/artist has followed, there has been a passion behind it, which elevated the songs to a new level. Rapper Kid Cudi, along with producer Dot da Genius, have joined forces as WZRD to come up with a rapper's rock record. While the list is long of people trying to merge the two together, to middling success, this attempt, at least on paper, sounded intriguing at the least. The final product, however, is curiously sterile and lifeless. The beats seem canned and generic, the guitar chords, while heavy, are simplistic and droning, and the lyrics appear to be have been improvised or grabbed from some pointless diary entries. I kept waiting for the album to lift off, but it plods along it's 11 tracks with relatively few interesting points.

"The Arrival" begins the album somewhat promisingly. Dark, foreboding electronics rise and fall with strings, reverbed guitar lines and heavy drum programming,



which leads immediately into "Brake" whose painful guitar chords are manipulated and droned over squiggly keyboards and booming drum beats, with Kid Cudi's practically monotone voice rarely showing any signs of life.



This appears to be the go-to template for most of the record. "High Off Life," with painfully simplistic lyrics, barking vocals, and guitar chords sounding like day one intro to guitar instructions, assaults the senses with its mediocrity.



"Love Hard" basically follows the exact same pattern.



And "Live & Learn" apparently cribbed its entire melody and chords from XTC's "Senses Working Overtime."



I know I have been a bit harsh on this record so far, but the painful nature of these tracks are even more galling when compared to the tracks that do work. And the tracks that do work are generally the least "rock" tracks on the album. "The Dream Time Machine (with Empire of the Sun)" is a lush, down tempo track with hushed, melodic vocals, and lots of spacey R&B textures.



"Efflictim" is a heartfelt ballad with echoing cascades of acoustic guitars, and a very impassioned vocal.



"Teleport 2 Me (Jamie ft. Desire)" has a Clams Casino-esque backing track of shoegazey electronica; which is unfortunately done in by another phoned in vocal from Cudi.



The frustrating thing about WZRD is that there are seeds here for something decent, and yet, most of the time, the tracks miss the mark completely. Again, it goes back to passion for the music you are making; there is no way to fake it when you are truly not invested in the material. By the end of the record, you just feel sad, mainly because there is no life here.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and peaks one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.