Blivit – Unhand the World (Orchard)
The bio for Blivit makes note of the band’s lack of guitars—which, of course, is fine. There are plenty of bands that get by without them. But every song on Unhand the World has what appears to be a guitar in it. In reality, it’s singer/keyboardist Jeremy Dyen setting his machine to a particularly guitarish tone. Why go out of your way to make your keyboards sound like guitars? If you’re ideologically opposed to putting one on your record, that’s fine—but find a different tone for your Casio, for Christ’s sake.
Unhand the World escapes the listener directly after hearing it, a bad omen for this batch of alt.rock bar-band filler. Sounding like a clueless Ted Leo fronting an average college band, Blivit’s sound is vague, unfocused, and more than slightly tired. Sadly, this album is simply unlistenable. It bores within the first 15 seconds. Blivit isn’t a bad band per-se, but Unhand the World simply wallows in its inability to be (or even fake being) energetic and driven.
There’s a lack of solid production ethos on Unhand the World—everything sounds flat, but instead of holding a fuzzy lo-fi charm, the album sounds more like a garage-recording gone wrong. And though the band’s other credits are reputable (opening for Weezer and The Roots, Dyen appears on John Legend’s new Get Lifted), Blivit underlines the damage that can happen when studio musicians get ahead of themselves and try to be rock stars.
Fuck reviews. Reviews don’t really matter. You can’t believe ’em when they fuckin’ praise you, and you can’t believe them when they criticize you. Because if I believe them now, that means I should’ve believed them the other times — and we know that they’re wrong all the fuckin’ time.
— Neil Young, Shakey (p. 669)
Mantzouranis probably had bigger dreams for his writing career: Rolling Stone, Spin…but that’s not how it worked out for this third-rate wordsmith. You can’t blame him for doing whatever he can to ride the coattails of actual artists making actual art, though. He clearly wants to be involved in music in some way—he’s like the T-shirt guy that wants so badly to be part of the action and impress the girls that flock around the men at hand.
He almost sounds like a convincing professional writer, complete with alt.something references. Not necessairly the worst writer in the world, but for the sake of true journalism, he should probably go back to the drawing board and work on his craft rather than his irrelevant opinions.
If you do a google search for “Tom Mantzouranis”, the first link you will find is a glowing review of the latest Bright Eyes turd, “I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning”. How easy it must be to deep-throat a cute little indie media darling like Conor Oberst rather than actually listen to any albums you plan to review.
Yes, I’m calling Tom’s bluff here. The only “lo-fi charm” on this entire album is the first fifteen seconds of the opening track, “Unhand The World”. If Tom had bothered to listen any further, he would have heard an immaculately self-produced album which is quite different (and significantly better) than the one he invented to describe.
If you’re even remotely interested in this band or album, don’t believe either of us. Go listen for yourself at http://www.blivit.net.
As for you, Tom…It’s time to floss Conor’s coagulated semen from your teeth, actually LISTEN to this album, and then produce an informed, honest opinion. That’s just how journalism works.
Hey Jason/John/Brian, here’s how investigative journalism works: we know that all three of your comments were posted from the same location. So how about paying attention to your own dental care, and stop spamming a site that gave your band a bad review.
The writer didn’t like your album; that’s his opinion. Deal with it.
Nice work, detective.
Yes, my roommate and I posted those messages after discovering the review in a google search. It’s not our album. We’re just fans who think your reviewer is full of shit.
Why is vehemently disagreeing with the writer’s opinion “spamming”?
In the end, who cares? Your site is the proud host of the only negative review of this album to date and will have ZERO impact on their success or failure.
This was a tremendous waste of time on our part, and we apologize and promise to never visit your site again.
And if you speak with Mrs. Oberst, tell him I wish him the best of luck with that gender reassignment thing.
God bless.
You can’t freak out every time someone doesn’t like what you’re doing. All you are doing is making sure they’ll never like what you’re doing. You’re an indie band making enemies with indie media, who are probably the only people outside of your local scene willing to listen to you. If you sent a demo to Rolling Stone they’d just throw it on the pile with all the other “next big things”.
When ever you make art your audience is going to have critics. If you weren’t ready to get criticism you shouldn’t have sent your stuff to a critic. I think Blivit could realize that just because you are psyched about you doesn’t mean anyone else will. I think you should just take what GloNo is saying with a grain of salt and hope you can find other outlets that dig what you’re doing.
hahahahahaha
when a band sees a bad review they can learn from it. the review didnt say that said band sucks completely,it says that the band could POSSIBLY do better
funny thing is,because of these whining fans now more attention is paid to this bad review so more people will be able to look and see it and will see what looks like “street team” wieners whining
Apologies. On further listening you guys actually come across as pretty easy on the ear. Good luck with whatever may come.
The issue is not the fact that Tom did not like the album. The issue is that his review is bullshit. He doesn’t have to like it at all, but if you are gonna critique an album do it right. Everything thing he says is crap from the start. I think Tom needs to learn how to be a critic before he thrashes any other bands.
I thought this review was so absurd it entered into the realm of surrealism. These guys aren’t trying to be rock stars, they simply are. There album shows maturity and Precision nothing that a “college rock band” would ever have. I have faith that Blivit will soon be doing there servicing the society as a whole, by rocking the entire world.