Even though it sucks to listen to Canadian bland-rockers Nickelback, you’d imagine it must suck a hundred times more to actually be a member of the band. In a few years, a historical meta-analysis on the group’s output will show that the group’s greatest earthly contribution was an innumerable stack of articles about how bad it was, this one included.
How could any artist handle being in one the most successful — yet horrible and clichéd — bands ever to come out of North America? Somehow, the band keeps doing it — Nickelback is set to release its seventh album this week, fit with the maudlin title of Here and Now.
Why release this? It ultimately must come down to money — there’s no other reason for Nickelback to be releasing an unfathomable seventh record of one-note pop rock.
Rich as the band members may be — although they still can’t outsell The Beatles worldwide — it must be pretty degrading when no one respects the garbage you keep cranking out. Honestly, after slogging through the 12 beer-gut slapping tracks on Here and Now, I couldn’t help but figure there was no reason to make this album beyond the taste of dirty cash.
Straight out of the stunningly awful opening track “This Means War,” it’s fairly clear the rest of the album is just going to be a textureless continuation of the Nickelback sound. The songwriting itself is as lazy and tasteless as any American Idol winner could hope to be singing over, and the production uses the same annoying mix throughout the record. Guitars are compressed into gated white noise, every instrument is quantized into an emotionless, perfectly correct tempo and lead singer Chad Kroeger’s roast-beef-and-whiskey vocals cut through clear as day.
Each member’s performances on Here and Now exemplify the concept of “phoning it in,” especially on songs such as the pathetically titled “Holding On To Heaven.” Not once do any of the players on any of the tracks sound like anything more than a computer program running its course.
Nickelback’s adolescent tendencies are on full throttle here as well, with lovely little songs such as “Gotta Get Me Some,” “Bottoms Up” and “Everything I Wanna Do,” where Kroeger sings, “You and me/ Sitting in a tree/ F—I-N-G/ She’ll do any naughty thing I want/ My baby she’s up for anything I wanna do/ She’s a giver and it gets her off/ But baby she’s into everything I wanna do/ If it was on TV or ever in a magazine/ She can take a fantasy and make it a reality/ She delivers every dirty thought/ But baby she’s into everything I wanna do.”
The only thing worse than having to listen to the never-ending wet dream of that song is the fact that I had to put the chorus on repeat 15 times to make sure I had it written down correctly.
Maybe I’m a masochist, but I did it again for “Midnight Queen,” where Kroeger promises “She’s gonna be my midnight queen/ Lock and load and I’m ready to go/ She’s gonna lick my pistol clean/ She’s gotta hold of me and ain’t letting go/ She’s gonna be my sex machine/ And I can never get her under control/ She’s gonna climb all over me/ I’m like a pony in my own rodeo.”
How does music like this get made? Better yet, how can the members of Nickelback live with themselves knowing they are members of Nickelback?
Oh, I forgot — there’s that dirty, dirty cash.
VERDICT: Nickelback fails — there’s nothing worse than an inexplicably mega-popular band that knows any garbage it releases can have a good day at the record store. Shame on you, Nickelback.
berman@umdbk.com
