![]() That unifying sameness is a powerful tool, and one that Nickelback should not - and does not - take lightly. There are few places in the world like a Nickelback concert, where a 40-year-old-plus, white, suburban dad can find so many other people just like him. Nickelback’s most compelling skill, though, is their ability to create a community through the medium of music. ![]() It warrants no alteration or experimentation. 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. Such complexities seethe throughout Dark Horse.Īttempting to pin down highlights on this album is bound to be a fruitless endeavor - they’re all highlights. 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. My point of confusion came when I heard Kroeger state that the woman will “tease them all by sucking on 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. Follow-up lyric “in the spotlight all night dissing everyone” seems to support this analysis. 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. The band’s decision to open with “Something in Your Mouth” is a complex one, and I’m still unraveling its meaning. 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. 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. I’ll admit, I had some difficulty listening to the album in its entirety. What that is, though, is more mysterious and cryptic than even the band itself. 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. 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 Nirvana carried the grunge era with impressive instrumentation and subtle lyrics, Nickelback’s Dark Horse dominates a genre that’s even better - post-grunge. ![]() It’s this kind of beaming strength and fortitude that propels Nickelback’s career highlight above even the most accomplished of bands. ![]() Take the album art, which acts as an intimate window into the world we’re about to jump into: a steel belt buckle. 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.Įverything about this album screams nuance and genius. Is This It, OK Computer, In Rainbows, Funeral, Modern Vampires of the City - all modern classics in today’s messy “rock” genre.
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