260. The Slits, "Cut"

 


I've been really lucky during the now-year-plus course of this project, because I've discovered some great stuff I otherwise wouldn't have heard; revisited some old favorites; and learned to appreciate things I didn't particularly like.  This one, I have to say, is a tough one, because I really, really, really, disliked this record.

I realize that this album has been lauded as a masterpiece of post-punk and gotten the Cobain seal of approval (for the song "Typical Girls," specifically), and I'm probably going to come off as a music idiot for not liking it, but this just did not resonate with me in any way.  Let me just say I was unsurprised to learn that "[w]hen the group first formed, they couldn't play their instruments for shit."  A lot of the songs sound like a group of people who have never written, or maybe even heard, a song before.  There's a lot of playground, sing-songy stuff that approaches "singing" but is so anti-melodic and atonal that it could just be bit.  

But maybe the lyrics are cutting and insightful and pierce the veil of illusion you've been laboring under?  Uh, no.  There's an anti-capitalist song called "Spend, Spend, Spend" that's about as revolutionary as the one-day boycott of Amazon:

I want to buy
(Have you been affected?)
I need consoling
(You could be addicted)
I need something new
Something trivial would do
I want to satisfy this empty feeling

Whoa, so buying things is like a drug?  Stop it, sister, you are blowing my mind.

If pressed, I can find one bright spot on here: "Instant Hit" has an appealing dub/reggae beat (a lot of the songs have nods to dub, as a matter of fact), and an interesting vocal part.  I didn't mind it.  

I probably should stop here.  This album was apparently very influential (I can definitely hear it in more modern acts like Moldy Peaches, who I also don't care for) and whatnot but this project is mostly about my personal reactions to the albums so whatever.  Anyway, hard pass.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Come at me, rock critics, because I'm a no.

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