Fantastic Review of Greta Van Fleet's album

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Greta Van Fleet sound like they did weed exactly once, called the cops, and tried to record a Led Zeppelin album before they arrested themselves.

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It’s a costume—Greta Van Fleet is all costume. And if things that look like another thing is your thing, get ready to throw your lighters up for a band whose guiding principle seems to be reading the worst Grand Funk Railroad songs as if they were a religious text.

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They care so deeply and are so precious with their half-baked boomer fetishism, they mollycoddled every impulse of late-’60s rock‘n’roll into an interminable 49-minute drag. Each song here could be written or played by any of a thousand classic rock cover bands that have standing gigs at sports bars and biker joints across America

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And at least Zeppelin knew to separate their sweet-lady-I’m-horny songs from their howling-about-literary-fantasy songs. Hilariously, Greta Van Fleet combine them into one on “The Cold Wind,” where the narrator (who is dying) begs his “sweet mama” to take the family ox (I guess) to town to sell it, when, mid-ox-transaction, this happens: “The Yankee peddler bargains with you on his way/Whoa sweet mama’s gotten herself a new dress.”

That’s funny, but it’s not supposed to be funny, because Greta Van Fleet do not possess self-awareness—at all.

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But for as retro as Anthem of the Peaceful Army may seem, in actuality, it is the future. It’s proof of concept that in the streaming and algorithm economy, a band doesn’t need to really capture the past, it just needs to come close enough so that a computer can assign it to its definite article. The more unique it sounds, the less chance it has to be placed alongside what you already love. So when the Greta Van Fleet of your favorite artist finally lands on your morning playlist, spark up a bowl of nostalgia and enjoy the self-satisfied buzz of recognizing something you already know. It’s the cheapest high in music.

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