Labels: Solidarity Recordings
Review by: MH
The press release for this CD references The Hold Steady and Bruce Springsteen. I can tell you that they sound nothing like either of them. It’s fairly straightforward punk rock with nods to a whole plethora of bands. It’s not a terrible album but I have a few complaints: I find it overly slick; the riff on “To Indiana” plagiarises an Alkaline Trio song “” not that there is anything wrong with that necessarily but when they have written a lot of great songs they could have picked something better than “Mercy Me” to plagiarise; the vocals are way too loud and completely dominate every song; the guitars are too quiet; I am also finding myself completely under the kosh from far too much woah woah-ing; there is more plagiarizing on “Ambassadors” which starts off like The Menzingers before moving into Flogging Molly territory. I think if you like the later Against Me! albums you might be into this but for it’s just far too tight all round for me – I would rather they loosened up a bit and distorted the guitars a bit more for a start. Also, whilst the vocals are quite distinctive there is very little variation in them. It’s almost as if they are trying to follow a punk-by-numbers formula and got it all slightly wrong. Like I say, it’s notthat bad though and there are some catchy enough songs on the album.