Labels: self released
Review by: james pacanowski
I pretty much offered to review this based on listening to the first song on the band’s bandcamp. But apparently first impressions are misleading.
Síctor Valdaña is, as far as I can tell, a one-man folk-punk band from Spain. The first line from his mouth on this release is ‘I can be a jerk’ which pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the album. Musically though, it seems at first like it might be okay. ‘Brownies’ kicks the EP off in a bouncy fashion, pitched somewhere between pop-punk and Plan-It-X and it honestly is quite fun. Then it takes a turn towards the turgid with ‘Springtime died last summer’, a forgettable Title Fight-ish jawn before going all out awful with ‘Sictor breaks up (part 1)’, which is full-on Against Me! while somehow managing to be even more hateful (sample lyrics: “I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s time to split.
It’s not that i don’t love you anymore,
it’s just that my life is now so tough
so could you please give me back my stuff?).
There’s a slow number after that which sort of sounds like Osker if Osker were a bit rubbish. Slow numbers are ill-advised when you are as nasally as this chap Victor is. Then part 2 to ‘Sictor breaks up’ rolls around, featuring the lyrics:
I know I broke your heart
but that gave you no goddamn right
to smash my jawbreaker records.
You stupid whore.
‘The ballad of Robert Johnston’ follows, another dull Against Me! sort of jawn, but at least it isn’t as lyrically hateful as the rest of the material on here.
Sweet relief comes in the form of ‘Naked bodies, drunken minds’ which is another nice, bouncy, jangly pop-punkish song in similar vein to ‘Brownies’. This probably won’t sound like much of a commendation to most, but it reminds one a little of ‘Your Favorite Weapon’-era Brand New, particularly in the vocals. Other comparisons that come to mind are ‘Static Prevails’-era Jimmy Eat World minus most of the twinkle. Which is sort of the point of most of that stuff, but nevertheless it’s just as breezy and enjoyable.
What you’re left with is a shit sandwich; the bookends are fine, but the filling will leave a lingering bad taste. It starts off promising, then swings quite wildly into the territory of utter dross before pulling itself out of the mire of its own mediocrity for a final respite. The fact that there is rarely anything of interest here musically means the lyrics become all the more prevalent, and in this case it is predominantly a bad thing. My advice to Síctor Valdaña is to quit the misogyny and throw away his Against Me! records. And my advice to you is to listen to the first and last song on here and try and pretend the rest of this EP doesn’t exist.