“DD Review: The Districts – Popular Manipulations.”

Score: 0/10

.

Is anybody else really sick of albums being like exactly 40 minutes long? I mean this new Districts opens with like a 15-second drone session and I’m already going, GET WITH THE PROGRAM, WE’VE ONLY GOT 39:45 TO GO YOU MAGGETS! Well, hey, I come from the time of Soundgarden albums that can soundtrack like an entire drive across Oklahoma. Also, I have to give props out to the Districts’ label Fat Possum, which from my experience is full of really cool and knowledgeable people pertaining to the TOPIC of vinyl sales. But does it then make it all the more depressing when this music fails to in any way contort in any meaningful or memorable way within such trite and stifling confines?
There’s almost zero point in differentiating between any of these songs — bellowing from the group of boys which apparently gave us such invigorating blues-rock on A Flourish and a Spoil (I confess to have missed the boat on Telephone, although that name does sound refreshingly drug-induced), all of these bowel-movement-like whine-fests coddle that same mythical optimism you know and love from diarrhea-merchants such as Mumford & Sons and Ed Sheeran. It’s like, just go back to singing about a chick’s a** already. At least you’ll be EFFECTIVELY repulsive, instead of just repulsively effective, which is even worse.