Punk Goes Acoustic, Various Artists
Let's recap - Punk Goes Metal was good, Punk Goes Pop great; so why the hell is Punk Goes Acoustic absolutely terrible? Slated for release about a year ago, PGA was set back after wrangles (allegedly) between Fearless and Victory Records. Rumoured line-up changes were swapped without any official word and then, out of the blue, a tracklisting and October release date was confirmed. With the previous two records in the series being well worth your cash, I was really looking forward to this, but it's a massive disappointment. It's said the sign of a good song is one that sounds great no matter how it's played. If that's true, most of these are bloody awful...
Lets start with the good songs. Open Hand start things off in fine fettle with 'Time To Talk' and the signs look good. Yellowcard perform a spirited 'Firewater' while Finch are passable with 'Letters To You'. 'A Hole In The World' by Thursday is by far and away the best effort here, closely followed by Strung Out's 'Velvet Alley'. Piebald sound like Rod Stewart as they rattle through 'The King', while Rise Against and Strike Anywhere are good, but not great. From Autumn To Ashes have a good stab at 'Chloroform Perfume' and Noise Ratchet do well too, but it's not that different from their normal style, truth be told. Problem is, not enough stands out, the wishy-washy nature of some of the recordings means the sound flutters past you as you drift away...it's just not interesting enough a record to listen to all the way through.
However, when this record goes bad, boy does it go bad. Thrice are boring with Dustin's power stripped bare exposing a weak centre; The Ataris bland and Rufio poor. Rufio especially struggle to cope without the technical riffery they are famed for. Coalesce and Grade perform forgettable tracks and Midtown's is yawnsome. But the worst song by a million miles is a terrible, terrible, terrible version of 'Cute without The E (Cut from the team)' by Taking Back Sunday. Imagined being tortured, limbs slowly cut off in the most painful manner you can think. Well that's heaven compared to this - a laboured, lazy effort which not only shows that Adam cannot sing, but exposes a fraility I didn't think TBS had. Someone should have said something, because this is abysmal.
In short this is crap and not worth your money. Some of the songs are cop-outs, with The Starting Line track specifically written to be acoustic and too many 'emo' bands making the transition from plugged to unplugged without risking anything to entertain or interest the listener. But the number of terrible efforts, including the appalling Taking Back Sunday song, far outweigh any plus points. Extremely disappointing stuff bearing in mind I had such high hopes.
Paul
