These Streets Are Full Of Garbage, A Review Of The Streets' Final Album, "Computers And Blues".

2.23.11

3:20 pm

 

Today I've been listening to the new (and final), Streets album, 'Computers and Blues'.

This is a horrible album to go out on.

 

A few years ago, The Streets put out their fourth album, 'Everything Is Borrowed', on which all the songs were written about and based on axioms and parables, so much to the point that some of the songs were just non-rhyming retellings of these old chestnuts. That fact plus the less than inspired background beats made for quite a bland entry.

When 'Everything Is Borrowed' came out, Skinner told the world that this was to be the second to last Streets album. I think therein lies the problem with 'Computers and Blues'.

 

This new album doesn't feel like the final piece in some puzzle or some huge, triumphant ending, it feels like he's doing this so he can be done, as if 'Computers' had been on his To Do list too long and he just got fed up with the clutter.

As on 'Borrowed', the backgrounds are unexciting and wallpapery, well assembled, but not as nuanced and compelling as their earlier work, and the astounding lack of energy in Skinner's vocals causes me to ask myself why I should care about these songs when the person performing them doesn't.

The track "Blip On A Screen" is about Skinner's unborn child, about a life he helped to create, but the level of enthusiasm he brings to it makes it sound like he's reciting the contents of a laundry hamper.

I'd point out other low points, but they've all sort of blended together to make a sad pudding of unimpressive, forgettable sound.

There are a few exceptions, such as "Trust Me", which has a pretty decent beat and just a ghost of Skinner's liveliness that is so noticeably lacking throughout the whole album, and "Lock The Locks", the final Streets track ever (unless Mike Skinner changes his mind), which has an excellent sense of closure to it.  Along with those two the two other stand out tracks I've encountered are "Going Through Hell", one of the only tracks on the album that exhibits any of the Streets' signature cockiness and vigor as well as a rousing, enjoyable beat, and "ABC", a too short, straight up rap using the alphabet as its lyrical template, but, I'm sad to say that these tracks stand out only because everything else on this record is so substandard. These tracks would almost surely be ignored on any of the Streets' first three albums.

 

The Streets' first album, 'Original Pirate Material', was rough, fresh and exciting, their follow up, a brilliantly mundane rap/opera about Skinner misplacing a thousand dollars entitled 'A Grand Don't Come For Free', showed their growth as a group and the honing of their skills as well as granted them a massive amount of fame and success, and their third album, 'The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living', documented the dangers of believing their own hype and the price they paid for the renown they'd earned. The story told by these three albums is brilliant and truly worth all the praise they've received, and to see the final two albums in their career turn out the way they have makes me wonder if Skinner should have stopped earlier.

Do yourself a favor and stick to the first three.