Labels: No Karma – Sun.Sea.Sky
Review by: Alex Deller
I don’t know if anyone else feels like this, but the records I hate the most, the ones that make me spit and rage, curse the very earth which belched them forth are not the ones that are intolerable filth, oh no, at least THEY have the common decency to be fucking crap. The records that get my gander giddy are ones like this, that are just average, mundane, dull. Records that drift along without you noticing, that try desperately not to offend, the kind that always take their shoes off when they come in, always-put-the-toilet-seat-down kind of bands. They aren’t good or bad, they just are. And so you keep them in your collection, and they sit there, never being played, but not deemed bad enough to be traded in to the two-bit thieves running the local record exchange. For me this is a cardinal sin, every day they stay there is like having piss rubbed in my eyes and I HATE IT.
So what we have is a perfect example of what ’emo’ means in these sorry days. Guitars that can be twinkly or mildly overdriven (but never too rude, naturally); vocals that are almost well-sung, but not quite; lyrics that could almost be good; patented emo packaging, and those typical indie / emo / whatever song titles. The whole thing smacks of what could be on Deep Elm if they lowered their standards even more.
So what we have is music that basically exists. Hard to hate, impossible to love. Snooze.