REVIEWS:
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(Philip Maddox's review)
A decent ska punk debut. The hit was the opening anthem "Sell Out", which you've probably heard on the radio at some point, and it's catchy as hell. Fast, bouncy, and a bunch of other good things. Nothing else here is as good as that, but quite a few tunes come close - "Alternative, Baby", "Everything Sucks", and "All I Want Is More" are all excellent, energetic tunes featuring great horn lines and vocals. Oh, I forget to mention - Aaron Barrett has a GREAT voice. Too bad he wastes it so often singing awful lyrics about how much being famous sucks and about how much he hates cool and/or "trendy" people. I like the sentiment, Aaron, but c'mon, this CD is 15 tracks long! Find a different topic for God's sake!
Back to the CD itself, though - like I said, a few of these tunes sound great (ooh, I forgot "Snoop Dog, Baby"! That song rules!), and the band is tight, but the songwriting really slips far too often for this to be a consistantly entertaining disc. Aaron got so wrapped up in the lyrics and overall sound that he kinda forgot to write good tunes to go along with it. "241", "Join The Club", "I'll Never Be" aren't bad per se, but I never really need to hear them again. If you're really into the modern ska sound, give it a try. Otherwise, Why Do They Rock So Hard? is much better.
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TURN YO' RADIO OFF! WE HATE THAT POP RAP SHIT! WE HATE YOU RADIO! WHY WHY! WHY! RADIO IS FO' PUSSY SELLOUTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN'T STAND JA RULE! 50 CENT IS SATAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! JACKO IS SO RIGHT ABOUT THAT ! ALL YOU RECORD COMPANY PUNKS ARE BUNCH OF COCKSUCKING BITCHES! WHAT IS YO' NAME BITCH?! YOU MUST BE ANUS LATRINE! YOU GOT PAIN IN YO' PANCREAS! YO' PANTS ABOUT TO FALL OFF ! I SEE YO' UNDERWEAR! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!
(reviewed by Philip Maddox)
Why? Why the hell was this released? 5 tracks, 2 of which ("Alternative, Baby" and "S.R.") are swiped straight from the last album! There's a song called "I'm Cool", a different version of which appeared as a hidden track on the last album (where it was too poorly produced to enjoy), which I used to like, but now there's a superior version on Why Do They Rock So Hard?, so this is redundant. There's an awful punk rock tune called "Why Do All Girl Think They're Fat?" (which blows REALLY bad). Finally, there's a cover of Operation Ivy's "Unity", which is really damn good, but it's pulled right off of an OpIv tribute disc. As a bonus, you get a poorly recorded snipped of about 15 seconds of "I Want Your Girlfriend To Be My Girlfriend, Too", which is an awesome song, but the group apparently thought was it "funny" to include a horrible sounding snipped version as a "bonus" track (they did the same thing on the last album, too). There's a multimedia portion, too, but all it is is links to the band's website, some horrible, unfun "game", and 3 videos, all of which appear in rotten quality. A lot of this sounds good, but the fact that they had the unmitigated audacity to release this when everything here can either be picked up elsewhere or shouldn't be heard at all is, well, sickening. It's worth a quarter, but I wouldn't pay any more.
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(reviewed by Philip Maddox)
This is the ultimate ska-punk party record. It pretty much flopped, as it didn't feature any singles as big and catchy as "Sell Out", but the actual quality of the record is much improved. In fact, the record's highlight, "I Want Your Girlfriend To Be My Girlfriend, Too", is MUCH better than "Sell Out". It features the same type of rhythm and all, but that horn line is so damn catchy and Aaron's vocals are even *gasp* PRETTY! Plus, the lyrics actually sound catchy and clever. Nice! Plus, a few tracks, like "Scott's A Dork", "I'm Cool", "Thank You For Not Moshing", and "The Kids Don't Like It" are all just as good as "Sell Out". The songs are well written and feature clever lyrics rather than rock star moping (well, they do mope through a few songs too many - "Big Star" and "Down In Flames" might have WORSE lyrics than the last album). The weird thing is that most of these songs are excerpts from their independent debut Everything Sucks, just like their official debut. Why are these songs so much better?
OK, things aren't quite perfect. A lot of these songs fall into the pitfalls that sunk the material on the last album - unfinished sounding songs, dumb lyrics, and an occasional totally bad song or two. Plus, the group hasn't developed their sound at all, so a straight hour of this can get a bit tedious. Still, if you dig the ska punk revival, this is about as good as it gets. What the hey, buy yourself a copy. You'll have fun, trust me. But turn it off before you get to the hidden track - it's funny for about a minute, but 10 minutes is a bit much. Reel Big Fish need to learn to either put worthwhile hidden tracks on their albums or else just leave 'em off. Actually, everybody should just leave 'em off. Especially one that come after a long pause in a song. If you play the CD on random, it screws everything up. Just put the song's name on the CD and put it where it should be and everything should be fine.
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