The following is the first in what I hope will be a series of overwrought, underinformed reviews of music, books, and film.

For a few days now I've been looking for the new King Crimson album. I used to be waaaay into KC during high school, as anyone who knew me then could attest to. Ever since, I've kind of lost touch, but I've still bought each subsequent full-length they've put out. 1999's ConstruKtion Of Light was a major disappointment, right down to the stupid alternative spelling in the title and the actual recycling of titles of previous songs. Bill Bruford and Tony Levin, arguably the World's Greatest Rhythm Section, left the band before that album. They must have known which side their bread was buttered on.

Throughout the 80s and 90s, King Crimson bucked the usual trajectory that aging rock musicians usually follow. King Crimson was the one progressive rock band that actually progressed. Rather than retread the same old ground, such as their prog contemporaries Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, etc, they reinvented the wheel. Over and over again. And it worked beautifully, right through 1995's THRAK, which was a solid, forward-looking affair. The band was not cashing in on their previous legendary recordings. Then came the late nineties and the new millenium, and that's precisely what they began doing. They even recycled titles of 70s classics for use on new songs, like "Fractured" and "Larks' Tongues In Aspic." Who were they trying to kid? Pat Mastelotto's a great drummer, but he's too beholden to electronic gimmicry, and he's yet to produce a snare sound I really enjoy. He's style without substance.

In fact, that's pretty much true of the whole King Crimson sound of the last seven years. It's like they figured that, instead of coming up with fresh material, they could just crank out the same odd-time-signatured workouts, pentatonic arpeggios, three-against-four polyrhythms, and epic instrumentals without actually putting any thought into them. For 99% of the musicians out there, learning any current KC song would still be a hellishly difficult ordeal. But for these guys, it's autopilot. The original "Larks' Tongues In Aspic" and "Fractured" contained all of the trademark prog gimmicks I just listed, but they had soul. They were memorable. Their counterparts on the new King Crimson album are like husks of actual pieces.

And I knew this would probably be the case going in. I'd read mixed reviews of the new album, cheesily titled The Power To Believe. (I know it's hard for prog-rock dinosaurs to remain relevant in today's fickle and saccharine music market, but come on, guys! Are you trying to get mistaken for a Christian rock band?) Rolling Stone liked it, which isn't saying much because, much like King Crimson, they've lost a lot of credibility over the decades. Pitchfork's resident prog geek Dominique Leone gave it a 6.3, which is pretty good considering he hated KC's last release, an admittedly tepid EP from last year. But he, like me and probably hundreds of other closet prog fans out there, are too young to have been around when Yes and Genesis and KC were cool and ruled the airwaves with 20-minute suites and the musical climate of the early 1970s was about as welcoming and open-minded as any commercial musical climate has been, or probably ever will be. So you see, I want these guys to be good again.

So I looked all over Iowa City for a copy. The Record Collector, predictably, didn't have it, and doesn't plan on having it anytime soon, probably because it isn't an obscure glitchtronica project from Sweden or an obtuse post-emo art-noise trio from Omaha or Chicago. Sam Goody (which I normally avoid because, as we all know, price-gouging is the order of the day at such places) had just sold out of it. At least the guy there knew what I was talking about. Same story at Best Buy. Finally, on my way out of town to go to Grinnell yesterday, I found it at FYE, a chain store in the mall which, similar to Sam Goody, boasts a limited selection and obscenely high prices and�good god, they can't be�TWENTY dollars? For a SINGLE CD? When have CD prices EVER been this high? Fine, fine, fine, I muttered, and bought the damn thing from a kind middle-aged man who had actually heard of KC and seemed glad they had a new album out. Then he asked me if I'd like to reserve a copy of the 8 Mile. I got out of there as quickly as I could.

I listened to it during the hour-long drive home. It's better than The ConstruKtion Of Light. It's better than last year's precursor EP. But it's still got these guys in their late middle age (Robert Fripp will turn 57 this year) sleepwalking through cold-as-steel instrumentals that are cerebrally exciting, but viscerally uninspiring. I mention their age not because I begrudge older musicians their right to continue making music past the mediagenically sanctioned ceiling of 30 (or, if you're really lucky, 35), and I would hope for my own sake that I'll still be allowed to play the drums when I'm 60. But I want these guys to teach a lesson to the narcissistic, muscially undereducated people half (or even a third) their age. I want them to take Avril Lavigne, who had never heard of David Bowie until she mispronounced his name at a recent press conference, and sonically rip her necktie right off. I want them to pin Linkin Park against the back wall of the n�-metal rock arena with walls of distorted guitar. I want them to show everyone how it's done.

Which they do, I guess. Teenage boys who are into Korn and Staind might enjoy the hypermasculine metal calisthenics that The Power To Believe offers, but then they should go over to their hippie uncle's house and borrow his vinyl copy of Larks' Tongues In Aspic. Instrumentals like "Level Five" and "Electrik" are interesting, and I'll probably listen to them a few more times, because I'm a drummer and I'm a prog geek. But they don't have the streamlined aesthetic that their precursors such as "Red" or "Starless" had. The pop songs are fine. Well, okay�"Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With" is dreadful, and the lyrics to "Facts Of Life" are truly na�ve and cookie-cutter. But "Eyes Wide Open" is a lovely ballad that works pretty well. In fact, this Crimson is at their best when they quiet down. Instrumentals such as "The Power To Believe Part III" (Yes, they're doing symphonic movements�they'll always be doing those) combine some guitar soundscapes with a diverse array of percussion and vocal treatments. These are pieces I can see myself listening to several times, while I'll likely be skipping over the here-is-my-prog-rock-cock thrashers.

Maybe it's that I'm getting old, too. I'm not as easily impressed. But no�"Dinosaur" from THRAK is still a brilliant pop song, and "VROOOM," from the same album, still kicks my ass just as hard as it did when I was 18. Plus, these guys are twice my age, so if I've gotten more discriminating, then it follows that they should have too. But I guess it doesn't always work that way. Far be it from me, anyway, to tell people who are a hundred times more talented and experienced than I am how to do their jobs. So my response is lukewarm. They're still having fun.

I'm writing this during an intermmission between the two movies I rented while staying over at my parents' house: Full Frontal and Igby Goes Down. Just watched the first, now I'll watch the second. I was going to try to draw some parallel between King Crimson and Soderbergh, and how they're both tops in their field but they're kind of coasting with these resepctive projects, but then I scrapped it because I already sound like enough of a jerk. Besides, Full Frontal was clever in places.

"He tried to concentrate. What would Adolf Hitler do in this situation? Or Joe Stalin? ... But it was hard to imagine exactly what Hitler would do. There were so many cultural differences."

�Ethan Coen, "The Boys"

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