Mylets “Retcon”
At first, I thought this
album began like a punk rock explosion ala The Clash or Rancid. It made me quite curious and really kind of
caught me off guard, but I was into it and wanted to see what else it possibly
had to offer me.
As the first few songs
take us on a journey, it is one of indie rock that reminds me mostly of
Pinback. The song “Hungover Tehran”
happens to have this incredibly catchy guitar riff that if isn’t in a car
commercial already could be one day. It
has that sound and, no, that is not a compliment as it is an annoyance.
The vocals can be
screamed somewhere between AWOLNATION and I Am the Avalanche, but then they
begin to crack. For some reason, within
the first few songs, this sounded like somewhat of a mature, sort of polished
band to me, if you will. If the members
hadn’t been in other bands before, they at least sounded like they’d been
playing together for a while and this wasn’t their first album together.
As the songs progressed
though, the music did not. I began to
hear come out what can only be described as amateur hour. It was a less than good version of I Kill
Giants and, really, why listen to a bad version of a great band that is still
putting out music.
In “Solid Gold”, we get
the line “I have lots and lots of guns, but what’s the point and where’s the
fun if I am alone and no one is home”, which just leaves me completely
befuddled. I wish I was at a loss for
words when it came to this line, but I mean, did this band actually think that
having a lot of guns meant you went out partying and people always came over
and visited you and all that? Are they
not aware of that deranged psycho-fuck who shot up a movie theater during “The
Dark Knight Rises”? Because I’m pretty
sure he probably lived alone and didn’t have anyone home in more ways than
one. And, yes, I’m not just blaming
whoever wrote these lyrics but the entire band for letting them be recorded and
no one had the good sense to explain to this kid who wrote them down why they
were a poor choice (I’m looking at you, drummer. Everyone wants to sing or play guitar, but
drummers are probably the hardest member of a band to replace. You should have said something!!)
When I hit the line
later on in the album “I’ve got your friends and you’ll never see them alive
again” I can’t help but feel like… Well, I don’t really feel like
anything. You might have my so-called
friends, but which ones do you have and I’ll let you know whether or not this
so-called threat bothers me.
Whether or not this band
is a bunch of kids in high school is not the point so much as the fact that
this band sounds like a bunch of kids
in high school. Musically, they’re
stealing style after style, while lyrically they really don’t seem to have
anything intelligent to say (In which case, why not just be instrumental?) They need to do some growing up.
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