Hey,
this is interesting stuff: a new release by these punkrock-veterans. It’s been
quite a long time since their last release and since then Jackson Mould, the
brilliant guitarist that made this band not "another MxPx-clone”, left
the band to leave the band behind with four faces. That was quite a deception
for all the Slick Shoes-fans, but the band is still alive and kicking, as they
prove on this new album. The cd contains more of the clean punkrock with the
cool, typical drums as we know from their other albums.
Just
like most of the other punk-bands from the early T&N-years (Ghoti Hook, MxPx,
the Blamed) this band matured… They didn’t get slower, but you can see the
main difference in the lyrics, they got more Christian and more serious. This is
interesting, especially because the booklet and the artwork is quite funny and
humorous, in contradiction to the lyrics. The
music sounds a bit more complicated as well, just as we could expect from the
producers Slick Shoes asked for this album: Bill Stevenson and Bill Egerton,
from the Descendents / All. I think the music is more focused on the rhythm and
less on the guitar-parts and that’s a pity. They have never been my favorite
punkrock-band but this record is a bit weaker then their other records, in my
opinion. Maybe that’s because I don’t really like the nasal voice of the
singer, Ryan Kepke.
There
are a few really good songs on this record, though, like “Have I Said Too Much?”, “Good
Intentions” (the screaming backing-vocals in this song are
cool) and “This Is Your Life”. Anyway, they’re an intelligent, clean
punkrock-bands and they DID grow in their songwriting, but it’s not my piece
of cake I must say. The new albums from Shorthanded, Element-101, Ghoti Hook and
MxPx impressed me more than this band. But if you liked albums like ‘Rusty’
you’ll love this album as well, so you’d better go the cd-shop in this case
! I’m not sure how to judge about this album, I shouldn’t be too negative, I
think, just like Slick Shoes sing in the 11th track of the album, “This is
your life”:
“
Your negativity will be your downfall”
Karel