Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

ATLANTIS: HYMNS FOR DISCO by K-Os is one of those discs that I heard all sorts of things about before I actually heard it. The general consensus was that one track --- “Sunday Morning” --- is a killer and the rest of the project sucks. I accordingly went directly to “Sunday Morning” and found it instantly forgettable, not the type of thing that sticks in your head, voluntarily or no, like “Crazy” By Gnarls Barkley. I set the thing aside and within 20 minutes couldn't remember any of it.

I do, however, take my duties as reviewer for music-reviewer.com seriously, so the next day (which was not Sunday morning) I tried again, beginning with “Electric Heat --- The Seekwill” and going all the way through, as if I was chained to a chair and couldn't get near a remote. I did an aural Zen cleansing of my mind and rid myself of all negative thoughts about K-Os, forgetting that he’s Canadian (hey, I mean, so is Beck) and that he does the same purple crap with his hair as the kid who is the lead guitarist in my son’s band. And, uh, well, everybody’s right. Listen to this mother from beginning to end and you'll want to skin yourself to get away from it. “Sunday Morning,” admittedly, isn't bad. After all of ATLANTIS: HYMNS FOR DISCO was over, I went back and put “Sunday Morning” on repeat a few times, stopping only when the thought popped into my mind that it might be interesting to have my wife just once dress up like Leonardo DiCaprio. Time to put GET RICH OR DIE TRY IN’ on.

It’s not that the tracks are bad on ATLANTIS: HYMNS FOR DISCO. Well, actually, most of them are, there’s just no getting around it. “Fly Paper,” which is apparently the other breakout single, leaves me cold, and I doubt that even a hit of X in a pitch-black club full of Sophia Milos clones could make it sound any different. Additionally, K-Os isn't exactly obscure in his influences. What makes “Sunday Morning” a great track is the Toni Basil/ “Hey Mickey” drumbeat behind it, and the Routers/ “Let’s Go” handclapping. When you focus on what K-Os is doing when he is on his own, however, it will put you to sleep. A track like “The Rain” is such a wretched example of blue-eyed soul that you'll have to listen to Hall & Oates for an entire weekend to get it out of your ears. By the time you get to “Highway 7” you’ll be ready to open a vein. One of K-Os’s, that is, not yours.

The closing track, “The Ballad of Noah/Chocolate,” is the type of thing that Scientologists could play while they're breaking you down for Operating Thetan rehabilitation. No thanks. I'll listen to “Sunday Morning” a few more times and put this one in the skeet pile.