Before I started writing this review, I listened to this album
\nbetween forty and fifty times – over and over and over. I’d listen
\nto it in the shower, while studying, while reading, and even
\novernight once or twice. I also reread all of my previous reviews,
\nlooking for a couple key phrases, none of which I found. I’d never
\nlabeled a band in that oh-so-pretentious manner of “Not Being True
\nTo Their Origins.”<\/p>\n
Well, as it turns out, Tenacious D really hasn’t been true to
\ntheir previous identity. They were a side-splittingly crude,
\nostensibly Satan-empowered acoustic duo based around power chords.
\nThey’re still most of those things, but what they’ve become is an
\nultra-polished rock band, with help from a couple notables from the
\nmusic community. Is this bad? Well, no, not really – but it’s
\ndifferent than I expected, and it loses a bit of novelty.<\/p>\n
The album starts out really nicely – JB and KG (Jack Black and
\nKyle Gass) are chatting, being themselves, and they burst into
\nsong. It’s all fairly laid-back, candor-filled dialogue that works
\nwell for bringing a bit of charm. The songs start to diverge from
\nthe familiar versions when the electric guitars drop in heavily on
\n“Tribute” (which, as they say, isn’t the greatest song in the world
\n– just a tribute!) and Explosivo.<\/p>\n
“Wonderboy” – which has evidently gotten a lot of radio play
\nlately – is a neat song about super heroes. It’s followed up by one
\nof the most crude bits of dialogue I’ve ever heard, and then just
\nafterward is “Fuck Her Gently” – one of the most beautiful, lovely
\nsongs about having rough intercourse I’ve ever heard. “Dio” is a
\nplea to Dio to set aside the torch – Gass and Black want in on the
\naction.<\/p>\n
Track nine, “Inward Singing,” features the “Greatest invention
\nsince yodeling” – singing on the breath-in cycle. It concludes with
\nBlack laying out a stream of profanities ending in his frustrated
\nfiring of Gass, setting up the next song, “Kyle Quit the Band.”
\nDon’t worry, they get back together by track 11. From there on, the
\ndialogue gets a bit confused and I’m not sure how it all fits
\ntogether. More infighting occurs, punctuated by the peculiarly
\ncombative songs.<\/p>\n
“Double Team” is surprise highlight, featuring seductive Jack
\nBlack, acoustic funk lines and the utterly dynamic interjection
\n“…here me and KG come naked, out of the side hatch!” If you
\nchoose to buy the album, I want you to immediately find the photo
\nof Gass and Black in their underpants and then think of this line.
\n“City Hall,” the epic ending song, is a testament to the
\npseudo-pomp in which
\nTenacious D<\/i> is drenched.<\/p>\n
One of the major aspects of Tenacious D is that they aren’t rock
\nstars. They are just two guys – yeah, Black has been in a couple
\nmovies – that think they’re hot shit. But they aren’t. They sing
\nsongs about groupies and having sex and “rocking your socks off,”
\nbut they’re really just two guys playing acoustic guitar in a bar.
\nDid they lose that with this album? A little bit, yeah – but it’s
\nstill a great listen. It’s fun, in that George Carlin type way, and
\nit’s good music, but it’s not as ironic as the stage shows
\nwere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":26026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6658],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-37237","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tenacious-d","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37237"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37237"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}