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By MATT GALLATIN

Daily Arts Writer

Is This It, OK Computer, In 

Rainbows, Funeral, Modern 
Vampires of 
the City — 
all modern 
classics in 
today’s messy 
“rock” genre. 
But there is 
one album 
frequently 
missing from 
these lists 
— something so necessary, 
so moving, so carefully 
constructed that I shouldn’t 
even have to mention its name 
(but I will): Nickelback’s Dark 
Horse.

Everything about this album 

screams nuance and genius. 
Take the album art, which acts 
as an intimate window into the 
world we’re about to jump into: a 
steel belt buckle. It’s this kind of 
beaming strength and fortitude 
that propels Nickelback’s 

career highlight above even the 
most accomplished of bands. 
While Nirvana carried the 
grunge era with impressive 
instrumentation and subtle 
lyrics, Nickelback’s Dark Horse 
dominates a genre that’s even 
better — post-grunge. The 
album finds the band eschewing 
those pompous, pretentious 
styles that critics love so much 
for what the world really 
wants to hear: just four good-
ol’ white boys from Canada, 
speaking to the good-ol’ white 
boys of the world. While most 
music writers and audiophiles 
might see their guitar skills 
as questionable, their lyrics as 
shallow and their existence as 
purposeless, Nickelback’s fans 
know something those high-
minded fucks don’t. What that 
is, though, is more mysterious 
and cryptic than even the band 
itself.

I’ll admit, I had some 

difficulty listening to the album 
in its entirety. I started to feel 
a bit queasy by the third track, 

“Gotta Be Somebody.” But I’m 
sure that was just the norovirus 
setting in from the dining 
hall food I’d consumed a few 
hours before, and certainly not 
the result of Chad Kroeger’s 
perpetually distressed vocals, 
which wrap listeners like a 
blanket of hearty, countryside 
soil. What I did know, though, 
from the few tracks my feeble 
body was able to handle, was 
that I was listening to the 
unabridged soul of rock — nay, 
music as a whole.

The band’s decision to open 

with “Something in Your 
Mouth” is a complex one, and 
I’m still unraveling its meaning. 
Kroeger proclaims the damsel in 
this story is “so much cuter with 
something in (her) mouth.” My 
initial thought was that the song 
was encouraging the woman to 
utter her feelings confidently, 
without the interference of a 
man — a message of feminist 
empowerment, if you will. 
Follow-up lyric “in the spotlight 
all night dissing everyone” 

Looking back at the 
voice of a generation

ROADRUNNER RECORDS

Look at this photograph!

A+

Dark Horse

Nickelback

Roadrunner/

Atlantic

seems to support this analysis.

My point of confusion came 

when I heard Kroeger state that 
the woman will “tease them 
all by sucking on (her) thumb.” 
In certain cultures, thumb-
sucking is a sign of disrespect, 
so perhaps he’s speaking both 
to the woman’s multicultural 
heritage and her independence. 
For North Americans, though, 
thumb-sucking alludes 
to childhood, so it’s not 
inconceivable to think that 
Kroeger is hinting at a deeper 
story altogether here, one 
that centers on the adolescent 
experience of this woman. Such 
complexities seethe throughout 
Dark Horse.

Attempting to pin down 

highlights on this album is 
bound to be a fruitless endeavor 
— they’re all highlights. 
Listeners might find it difficult 
to decipher one track from 
another, but that simply 
speaks to the consistency and 
confidence that Nickelback has 
with their sound. It warrants no 
alteration or experimentation. 
Why add confusion to 
perfection?

Nickelback’s most compelling 

skill, though, is their ability to 
create a community through 
the medium of music. There 
are few places in the world like 
a Nickelback concert, where 
a 40-year-old-plus, white, 
feminazi-hating suburban dad 
can find so many other people 
just like him. That unifying 
sameness is a powerful tool, and 
one that Nickelback should not 
— and does not — take lightly. 
Dark Horse is their gift to the 
world, sure, but even more so 
it’s a love letter to Nickelback’s 
fan base. Reverence to followers 
is a necessity, and one that 
many bands fail to account 
for. Nickelback makes no such 
mistake.

Some of those previously 

mentioned pompous critic 
fucks have mistakenly accused 
Nickelback of creating nothing 
more than reductive, cliché hard 
rock music. But I ask: could 
the five million people who 
purchased Dark Horse have all 
been misguided? When have 
millions of people ever been 
misguided? That’s right: never.

Editor’s Note: This is part of an 

April Fools parody B-Side issue. 
Don’t beat up Matt for his bad 
opinions.

ALBUM REVIEW

4B — Thursday, March 31, 2016
the fool-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

