Labels: prison jazz
Review by: Ian Scanlon
On a cursory listen I was kind of surprised that Andy Malcolm didn’t review this himself. This appears to be the kind of thing that in ’99 I regarded as standard issue US indie rock.
However on closer inspection, what was sounding like the get up kids mixing up with a well recorded superchunk (think here’s where the strings come in), is subtly, well to put it politely a little bit MTV’d up.
I know some people dig this kind of pop punk edged indie rock, but to me it’s just a bit off. It’s sort of like the unreal valley or whatever they call it, the point where computer simulations of human faces get so close to perfect that they actually look a bit scary and less lifelike. I think one of the big problems is the harmony vocals that go through each and every tune (really every line, honestly, could they just not decide who was the main singer?). I suspect that these kids are indeed teens and are trying to do their utmost to sound rocking, but I think their years of watching the warped tour are closer at hand than they might be thinking. So they are excitable teens, but unforgivably (to my ears), they’ve forgotten to sound like excitable teens, I mean would you have listened to all those bands from back in the day if they weren’t teetering on the edge of falling apart? There are nice tunes here, but it’s just too well put together. Sorry teens, you are sort of the anti Meneguar.