Zip City wrote:I agree. It's far less overtly-political than the press kit implied
This, exactly. For unscrupulous journalists, the presskit has always been more important that the record. I call it 'leading the witness." Some friends and I had a fun theory a few years ago that you could put literally anything in the presskit / bio--no matter how outlandish--and the majority of the reviews would parrot those sentiments, sometimes verbatim. For example, if I put out a bog-standard rock and roll album and the accompanying bio said "For this record, Jimmyjack spent a great deal of time listening to nothing but Wagner's Ring cycle,, EPMD, and his car alarm, and says the album's lyrics were inspired by a trip to Epcot," the reviews might read something like "Clearly, the influence of Wagner and car alarms informs the album's insistent, dramatic librettos, while the 4/4 rhythms suggest a fixation with late 80s hip hop; Jimmyjack's songs, framed in the context of educational amusement parks, provide enough thrills and suspense." Or some dumb shit. And then someone would crib from
that review, and so on and so on.
It's a fun road trip game, anyway: trying to come up with the most ridiculous 'influences' you can, and then trying to translate that to a review by the kind of 'critic' who doesn't bother to actually interface with the music at all.
As far as DBT, I think they did on AB what they've always done. They wrote songs that say something, and mean something, and did so without clubbing anyone on the head (more or less). That's just one of the things I have always really admired about this band. It's a very, very fine line to walk, but they make it look easy.