“Mad Season”

Matchbox Twenty

“Mad Season” is more like “Bad Season.” There is, hand to god, one track worth listening to on this CD and even then maybe only once or twice.

This is just not a good album and if it represents Matchbox Twenty’s best effort, they should start looking for jobs in other industries.

This is why they call bands like this one-hit wonders, because they eventually max out. It’s like Men at Work’s third album or the INXS album you didn’t even know came out until you saw it in the 99 cents bin. You looked down upon it with horror at how far the mighty had fallen. Except in this case, it probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise that Matchbox Twenty would peter out now.

What did we get, three big “hits” and Rob Thomas’ little duo with Santana? Well, it wasn’t a bad run for this day and age, time to retire.

“Mad Season” is like really good Christian soft rock. It has that inspirational yet cool stank all over it. “Crutch” sums up the album as a whole “One step from down, down, down.”

The one track worth listening to at all is a B minus at best, “Angry.” They started out as strong as they could, but like the mighty salmon struggling to go upstream to compete the mating cycle who gets nabbed by the great brown bear, they blew it after all that wasted effort. Unlike the salmon, they should have just stayed home. At least a salmon is fighting for his right to breed; there is something majestic about the effort even in failure.

But Matchbox Twenty doesn’t even have anything to say. Singing about cute girls and the pain of lost love while your leather pants chafe is just overdone and pass‚, boys. Try getting a little life experience under your belts that doesn’t involve driving around L.A. picking up skanks and maybe someone would care about what you have to say.

The best music is made by people who are oppressed and sing of freedom and the worst music in the world is made by pampered white boys whose mommies and daddies paid for their guitar lessons. And then there is Matchbox Twenty. The “Roadtrip” soundtrack was better.

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“Skull and Bones”

Cypress Hill

There is nothing quite so satisfying as getting your hands on that new release from a band that has never let you down before and being not only satisfied, but thrilled to no end to find they still kick it hard-core.

“Skull and Bones” is a double disc collection from Cypress Hill that rocks the house and once again proves that the Hill be keepin’ it real.

From start to finish they keep the hits coming. Not only are they the tightest rappers around with more street credibility than a dozen dealers, they manage to get a message across to listeners that isn’t just about poppin’ a cap in somebody’s ass.

“Skulls and Bones” has something to say about the music business from an insider’s perspective. “(Rap) Superstar” uses sound bites from Eminem talking about how to play the game of being a rap star.

It highlights the need for balance between being hard and having to bite your tongue when the money men get in your face. You can’t just blow some suit away for stepping to you like you could some drug dealer.

All the tracks are phat and the rhymes are tighter than quality Tupperware. “Stank Ass Ho” sounds a bit too much like somebody trying to sound like Cypress Hill than it does Cypress Hill.

“Cuban Necktie” is just good old-school Hill talking about gangsta lifestyles.

With a wonderful Spanish intro, the track itself just exudes L.A. interspersed throughout the track, the sound of a shotgun being pumped just takes one back to the early days of Hill.

“You can’t deal with it, you can’t deal with it, you can’t deal with, it’s Cypress Hill with it.”

It’s tough without being off-putting and in this day and age when the largest percentage of rap is bought and paid for by young, white males, it’s nice to know that the Hill can roll with the changes and point the finger at the Man without going on about crackers because we all know the problem isn’t race so much as it is wealth.

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“Inside Job”

Don Henley

Dinosaur rock at its best? Not exactly.

This isn’t even your father’s Don Henley album, unless your father thought the Eagles really slow stuff was so much better than their fast, hard stuff.

Henley has said he wants to tailor his style for the baby boomers because, in his estimation, no one else is doing that. At least not since the late 1980s.

Apparently he’s never heard of James Taylor. Any way you look at this new album, it is a weak excuse to put out a soft and soapy light rock disc.

Baby boomers pretty much kept the lid on new music for decades and now is not the time for them to take back the airwaves. If “Inside Job” is any kind of measure, the boomers can stick to the oldies stations because Henley won’t be seeing any serious airplay on real radio stations soon.

Track after track of “Inside Job” is just so much unoriginal lounge music. Henley is sounding like a pale imitation of himself ten years ago.

The only new addition is a few funky beats on “Nobody Else in the World But You” that are probably too much for boomers to handle any way.

Henley may be the only person who is convinced that boomers want new music any way. If they are they kind of people interested in new music, they are probably interested in keeping young and fresh listening to artists capable of real innovation and taking rock to new levels.

Moot is the best way to describe this album. It does nothing new and recaptures nothing of the old.

Gone are the days when Henley could do a sweet croon like “The Boys of Summer” and sell it to every one, not just the old folks. Henley gets an A for effort by trying to appeal to his people, but a D for product.

Start to finish, this album could put a hyperactive 6-year-old who’s been gunning Jolt all afternoon to sleep.