Lostprophets - The Fake Sound of Progress

One of my favorite stories is a short by Nick Hornby (High Fidelity and About A Boy you're probably most familiar with). In the story, you have a heavyset, muscle-bound guy who drops his job as a club bouncer in order to spend more time with his family and not get knives drawn on him. He takes a job at an art gallery, and he is assigned to guard a painting of Jesus... But it's actually a mosaic Jesus, kind of like the Truman Show poster, where little pictures make the big picture, but in this mosaic of Jesus, little cutout nipples make up The Son. People are not happy and get very upset about the picture (hence our hero's vigil) but the main character actually grows fond of the picture, and guards it with great dignity. He begins to respect the artist and stick up for the painting to his wife and naysayers who visit it. Then one day, while he's distracted, someone comes in and tears the mosaic Nipple Jesus to shreds. Our hero is crushed, only to learn that the artist of the offensive painting made the painting to get reaction. She had posted a camera in the rafters and filmed the whole thing, and thus the film becomes the actual exhibit. Our hero feels disillusioned, as though the openings he found within himself through the painting have been shut, and decides he'd rather go back to nightclub bouncing, where things are at least simple. Why did I tell you this story, as it probably had nothing to do with what you thought the Lostprophets album was about? Because half the time, artists tend to make you think that they're about one thing, when they're actually about another, so we, as listeners, get kind of disheartened when we go see or hear our musicians do their thing and it's quite another side of the coin we thought they were tossing. Maybe you can judge these things by album covers or band members' wardrobes, or maybe you can't. The Lostprophets are definitely the video camera filming something akin to the noisy dissolving of what rock and roll used to be, and though their growth and advent on the ears of the needy are now the part of the focal point of rock, most of us are like the hero in the Hornby story, lamenting the state of the initial, more realized product. We already went through a process of identification with rock and it's necessity, and watching the motion picture documentary of its demise is almost beside the point and not exactly something we like to be reminded of, but there's no escaping it: Rock music is moving on without those of us in purgatory, so we might as well throw ourselves into something new. The Lostprophets are new, and they're getting fair play on MTV2, which is a good sign of their perhaps fake progress, because, as I've already alluded to, there's not much progress going on in rock music, just a duplication video of something that was already done. The Lostprophets, at best, sound similar to Make Yourself Incubus. There's the perpetual "butterflies, butterflies, butterflies... CAR!" soft-to-loud crescendo that mirrors the alterna-rock, Pixies-ish formula that has been made so popular from the gamut of Nirvana to Hatebreed, so there's nothing new there. The lyrics are easier to understand than System of A Down, but silly lyrics done with passion and persuasion are better than coherent lyrics sung with pseudo-love. "Shinobi vs. The Dragon Ninja", the single and video song from The Fake Sound of Progress is perfect for second stage Ozzfest, as it lacks the authenticity and crunch required for front-stage, and the title track is a dovetail to Incubus' "Pardon Me." "Five is a Four-letter Word" is gritty with copious scratching, with good layering and MiniVoid similarity, as "...And She Told Me to Leave" hearkens a bizarre jinx of The Calling and Incubus, but it's hook is on a surprising emotional level in lieu of the simplicity of the prose. "Kobrakai" is irreverent, with its bumpy riffs coasting effortlessly into jazzy guitar. For "rawk!" factor, refer to "Awkward" and "A 1,000 Apologies" which bring a Mudvayne meets Fishbone appeal. The only track wallowing in vice is "For Sure", which is perfect for MTV 10 Spot segues or prog-rock introductions. The Lost Prophets are likable, jangly, and good at their craft, but the only problem is that their craft has already been done, and they haven't been innovative enough yet to stand out from their predecessors, whose art was already on the wall and torn off, so watching it again is, sadly, a bit of a let down. [www.lostprophets.com]