Review
Andrew W.K.
The Wolf

I'll keep this short so you kids will understand me. I want the time back I spent listening to this. I feel cheated, robbed, and insulted. This is neither fun nor funny. It's devoid of any worth. It's stupid, it's banal, it's bland. So why does it get a 1.3? Two reasons: one point for not being pop-punk, a point one because it's not the worst thing I've ever heard, and a point two because you have to admire someone who can rip off an entire subculture and repackage it to a different subculture without changing a thing about it. It's simply watered-down arena rock that all the kids can listen to and feel "ironic" about, while they really can't admit to themselves that they like Andrew WK for the same reasons they hate AC/DC. Fans of the latter hate the former, fans of the former can't come to grips with reality, and the rest of us are either laughing at them or just ignoring the man, since he's laughing his way to the bank with the $18 in irony you just handed across the sales counter. The fact that so many people are allowing themselves to be taken advantage of and ripped off isn't something that I can support in the least bit. The entire concept behind AWK is to rip off ideas that were old twenty years ago and repackage them as something new and exciting, but I won't buy into it, unlike many who already have. This record is entirely unnecessary. It's nothing more than a retread of ideas that were forgotten for good reason. Don't pull the "I listen to it because it's fun!" bullshit. Has your desire to have "fun" music completely shut off your function to reason and to view things objectively? Go pick up a Dismemberment Plan record, or maybe Nothing Feels Good by the Promise Ring, proof that music can be fun and also be intelligent, engaging, and not insulting to the listener. Hell, just go buy some Gary Glitter, Led Zeppelin, the aforementioned AC/DC, and a hair metal comp, as that's from where all these ideas were stolen. If you love all those things, or are at least familiar with them at all, then you know that this is second-rate music from a second-rate genre. But more than likely, you hate all those things, so why, pray tell, are you listening to this?