Good Mourning

When they emerged from the late-'90s post-grunge steaming indie heap, they had promise, thanks to brutal, razor-sharp punk-as-punk melodies and a dollop or two of anger. But slowly, slowly, slowly their edge dulled, bringing us to this 40-minute collection of boring, sing-song "power-pop-punk" melodies about nothing so trite as death and dying (The lyrics are so long and detailed they oftentimes resemble novellas more than rock songs).

I blame the sameness of melodies for the overall glazed-eyes effect. That and a total loss of the bitingly unique style that they brought to their earlier releases (The stunning Maybe I'll Catch Fire, comes to mind). It's all gone, replaced by the plastic, formulaic popcraft that epitomizes everything that's wrong at Vagrant these days. How many watered-down versions of Bad Religion and NOFX do we really need?

back to   Posted June 26, 2003. Copyright © 2003 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.