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Cover Art Primitive Radio Gods
Rocket
[Columbia]
Rating: 1.2

"Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand" is like those 7" singles that showed up in the '80s with no full-length albums to go with it, except this one has an album. These songs would get plenty of airplay (especially in dance clubs) and sometimes even make the Top 40. As a single, this is going to sell like the Rubik's Cube. As an album? Let's face it: Three minutes is enough for even the most mind-numbed, tasteless societal outcast.

That said, Primitive Radio Gods is just one guy who, from the sound of the album, sits in his room all day drawing samples from Jon Secada records and writing sappy lyrics with no real content. Even more pathetic than the music on the record is the fact that it warrants a "Parental Advisory" sticker solely because one of the songs on the album is called "Motherfucker." And by the way, "Explicit" is a pretty exaggerated term for the old f-word. I mean, hadn't we all said 'fuck' by the time we were five, anyway?

At any rate, you don't want Rocket in your record collection now or ever since the music sounds like a third-rate, decaffeinated version of Ned's Atomic Dustbin and because, by reading Pitchfork, you've already proven you have better taste than that (I hope).

-Ryan Schreiber

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RATING KEY
10.0: Indispensable, classic
9.5-9.9: Spectacular
9.0-9.4: Amazing
8.5-8.9: Exceptional; will likely rank among writer's top ten albums of the year
8.0-8.4: Very good
7.5-7.9: Above average; enjoyable
7.0-7.4: Not brilliant, but nice enough
6.0-6.9: Has its moments, but isn't strong
5.0-5.9: Mediocre; not good, but not awful
4.0-4.9: Just below average; bad outweighs good by just a little bit
3.0-3.9: Definitely below average, but a few redeeming qualities
2.0-2.9: Heard worse, but still pretty bad
1.0-1.9: Awful; not a single pleasant track
0.0-0.9: Breaks new ground for terrible
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