Shitty vocals, lyrics ruin otherwise decent album

This album is a noisefest, and as someone who loves punk music I didn’t have a problem with that. However, the punk rocker in me really didn’t like anything else about this album, and especially hated the lyrics. All were cliché and stupid.

The first song, “Greenwood Backyards” was filled with barely audible guitars with and soft flashes of string work. There’s cymbal tapping and cymbal classing in abundance, but no bass tones – in any song. This makes them all too high-spirited and similar sounding.

Also, there’s nothing more annoying than the whining, babyish voice that most indie singers have these days. It’s to imagine that sounding like a prepubescent boy is something to aspire to.

Next, out of the title track we get: more distortion. There are a couple of guitar solos played crisply on the high strings, but mostly the treble noises fade into one another. The vocals here have a deeper and grungier intonation, as if the singer has crud in his larynx like a normal person.

All of the lyrics from “Southern City Saturdays” are along the lines of “cuts on my hands” and “drugs on the pier.” In fact, the cliché imagery is making me wonder if this song is a parody of a song about Southern California.

During “Locust Shells” I started to wonder if the drummer knows how to sync the kick drum with the rest of his set. Whatever – it’s absent for some reason. Toward the end of the song there’s a guitar solo with a deep sound, lots of distortion and feedback. Why can’t the whole album be like that?

The last song features more whining, more distortion and lyrics like “our home, where people are getting old, getting sick and dying … and being born.” Gag. This song was a throw-away, which is a sad occurrence on a five-track album.

This album was unremarkable. If you want distorted guitars, lots of instrument noise and sincere lyrics about life, explore the late ‘80s, early ‘90s catalog and stay away from this new crap.