"And Napoleon is weeping in a carnival saloon"

In the first ever post on this site, our host mentioned one of the 5 Guys having an OCD like predisposition towards music. Well I'll go ahead and come out of that closet carrying a harmonica, my iPod, and a mirimba. He was talking about me. I buy (yes, actually go to the store and physically purchase) anywhere between 2 and 5 CD's in an average week. Some of the stuff I get is very mainstream, while other stuff is fairly obscure (as is pretty evident by the titles of some of my posts).
With that said, I always respect and usually agree with the music reviews in Blender. However, last night I was reading this month's issue (the one with Tila Tequila on the cover, which in itself is a huge problem) and saw that they gave a CD of Scarlett Johansen doing Tom Waits covers 3 ½ stars while they hit the new 3 Doors Down with 2 stars. I just....don't know what to say. I will certainly admit that ideologically 3DD are most definitly built to appeal to Red Staters and there is a song on the CD that was commissioned by the National Guard (which rocks by the way), but overall the CD is 12 songs of hard hitting, guitar driven rock and roll. There is really not much to dislike if you enjoy rock music on any level. I agree it is nothing revolutionary, but it certainly isn't "bad".
On another note, Gavin DeGraw's new release is highly enjoyable. Very similar to his first one, which was also surprisingly good. There isn't really anyone else who combines guitar riffs with piano melodies quite the way he does, especially when each of those take a back seat to his tremendous voice. Worth checking out.