Artist: We Are Wolves

Album: Invisible

Reviewer: Charlie Gokey

Tiny Mix Tapes, 2010

Writing Disorders: Scorn Disease







Longest Sentence: 55 words

Stuffiest Phrase: “there are a few memorable moments and decent hooks that keep this record from being a failure per se”

Most Emo Phrase: “might cause an adult listener to strain whatever muscle is associated with rolling ones eyes”




Charlie, for the most part, I avoid fingering Tiny Mix Tapes because so many of its writers use pseudonyms.  It’s not as fun to bash a critic when it means I have to write things like “CEEGO, your writing’s never as tight as your shirts.” My lectures don’t have the same impact when I’m not addressing someone by their given name. At least I don’t think they do.

Up until now I’ve let your picky putrescence slide without feeling RipFork’s tines, but the truce didn’t hold under this latest bit you churned out.  I decided to find out who CEEGO actually was.  It didn’t take long.  Though you protect your tweets, deduction tells me that the bespectacled 110-pounder in the woman’s t-shirt who follows “RappersThatSuck” is probably the dude I’m looking for.

Let’s forget for a moment that you’re the frontman of a band named The White Foliage and just concentrate on why you felt another band, We Are Wolves, didn’t eclipse your standards.

“I feel less than charitable when presented with a record that sounds like Joy Division and The Stooges (circa Raw Power) teamed up to soundtrack a beer commercial.”

What exactly does a beer commercial’s music sound like, Charlie? We talking Miller Lite or Blue Moon here? And what’s with the present tense? You “feel” less than charitable? Are you implying that you incur that weird reaction frequently enough to write it that way, or do you really mean you “felt” less than charitable on this one occasion? Sounds grouchier that way, I know.

Speaking of grouchy, you really hammer this band for being too “Sumner-esque”:

“a few shameless Joy Division lifts (the worst offender being “Walking Commotion,” which jacks the distinctive beat of “She’s Lost Control” and sets it to some unabashedly Sumner-esque guitar work)”

Dude, writing that a band lifts something from Joy Division is like saying the toaster oven ripped off the toaster.* I really don’t think it qualifies as SHAMELESS if a band manages to recreate a single-measure drum loop or happens to use an Ab through Eb progression of power chords 30 years after Unknown Pleasures. If you’re stuck on a song not sounding original, you might leave it at that instead of accusing the band of ill intent.

You got caught up in the whole post-punk beer thing for a while, but what really seemed to set your froth over the brim was the singer. You seem to have it out for him like I have it out for Stephen Deusner.

“that’s not quite enough to make up for lead vocalist Alex Ortiz”

“a mostly unvaried playground-chant-style rhythmic delivery gets old pretty damn quick.”

“sounding like he has perhaps only a slightly less angry lobster dangling from his testicles”

“Only slightly less awful, “Holding Hands” sees Ortiz updating Hoobastank for the indie set with the line “I have no reasons, my reasons are you.”

Yeesh. Let’s return for a moment to the fact that when you’re not shoveling dung on bands under a pen name, you’re the lead vocalist of your own indie band.  I have a pretty firm handle on why college-bred doofuses around 24 years of age write music criticism, but I’m still struggling to understand what drives an actual musician to level barbs at another.  I checked out your band’s songs, Charlie, and I enjoyed listening to them. However, I don’t think such a strong practitioner of the mumbling coo style of vocals should be hitting another dude’s pipes for getting old quick.

Charlie, or CEEGO, or whatever you want to be called – stick to playing music. Have fun doing it and keep up the good work. Leave the ugly prose to the real music lice. I feel the good in you.

*If the toaster oven came before the toaster in wheneverthefuck22, I’ll gladly reverse the order.