Matadors
Flame The Whisper
5
It was early last year that I had the assignment at my old site to review Matadors’ The Muse Of Senor Rey, an album that smacked of kitsch and gimmickry in a most unappealing sort of way. Unless I have a 1957 convertible to ride around in with a pompadour hairdo to grease to the sky, the picture just isn’t quite complete for me when playing a Matadors album. However, despite having almost no business being reviewed here or any other metal-based site, Flame The Whisper is a hell of a lot more tolerable than their previous disc even if nothing has changed stylistically.
Where songwriting is concerned, Matadors have always had a knack for writing catchy material that sticks in your head, whether you want it to or not. There are hundreds of songs from talentless pop bands that also have this adhesive quality, but you might not want to be waking up in the middle of the night with them ringing in your ears. Matadors are good-time rock music that comes across as squeaky clean and utterly harmless, and only a few steps above being bubblegum. There’s still that bizarre Spanish flair to much of the disc, but even this interesting musical element is neutered by the lamb’s wool softness of the material. Vocally, things couldn’t be more mundane and repetitive, as every single tune is delivered with a flat, half-talking breathy sort of crooning that relies more on personality and swagger than actual singing ability. But the combination of completely interchangeable tracks and consistently brain-numbing vocals make this an awfully hard album to sit through without wanting to drink heavily as a distraction.
The Cha!-Cha!-Cha! crap is just too much, and wasn’t very clever or unique in the first place, as though the band read bad past reviews criticizing this catchphrase on the previous album and decided to drive reviewers even crazier with it. “The Luscious Cabaret” and “Like A Matador Pt. 1” are both full of this. Honestly, I have the same problem with this album as I did with the last one. Flame The Whisper is infectiously catchy, riddled with hooks, and musically bimbo-like, even silly to the point when I can’t even unwind and just enjoy the music because it sounds so damn corny for such a musically talented band (they really are good musicians).
Even though I find this album to be less annoying than their previous one, songs like “Ditched On A Pile” are only slightly less irritating than a Black Eyed Peas tune (pick one) due to the idiotic vocals and campy phrasings. Seriously, even as airheaded and lighthearted as this may be in intent, it’s not even enjoyable for a laugh after the first three spins. Like a Swedish rock Weird Al Yankovic doing an Andrew Dice Clay parody, all I can do is laugh and shake my head at this comedy, and not in a complimentary way. I’ll regret losing the moments of my life I wasted by listening to this nonsense.
Related
MatadorsThe Muse of Senor Ray
4/15/2006