Everyone makes mistakes, even the reviewing team here at PT. Back in May 2003 I (rather regretfully) gave A Static Lullaby‘s first album a whopping 4.5 stars out of 5. Looking back, that score was a little too high. It’s not that it’s a particularly bad album – for the genre it’s pretty good – but it just hasn’t stood the test of time at all. Infact bands have come and gone and released albums that have left ASL from pretenders to the ’emo’ throne to also-rans. Listening back to this album two years on, it’s as cliched as the genre it helped spawn. Of course there was no way of telling how 2003 and 2004 would become plagued with such generic riffage and so my over exuberant review can surely be excused (please?), especially now I’ve admitted my sins. Anyway, fast forward a couple of years and A Static Lullaby are back – amazingly on a major label. Whoever said this music died last year was clearly wrong. Well they weren’t, someone should just tell the CEOs that. A Static Lullaby circa 2005 sound like a band stuck in a timewarp; the sound of a band struggling to get out of 2003.
‘Faso Latido’ is exceedingly average in every way. It’s so two years ago, as the luvvies would say. Token loud/quiet, sing/shout, hard/slow – it’s here in all its generic glory. Everything the band – and a million other bands – have coined successfully over the past three years is repeated here. ‘Faso Latido’ is the musical equivalent of a band scraping the barrell, attempting to milk the last cow out of as much cash as it can. ‘Smooth Modulator’ is dull, ‘Shotgun!’ forced. ‘Overture’ is a complete waste of 72 seconds of my life.
There are some half-decent moments to be fair, although none really live up to tracks like ‘The Shooting Star That Destroyed Us’ or ‘Annunciate While You Masticate’ from the first record. ‘Stand Up’ has singalong parts that are memorable at least, while closer ‘The Jesus Haircut’ is musically challenging. But for all the sweeping guitars and thudding of the drums, there’s nothing to inspire me. There’s nothing to make me want to listen to this record over and over – or even again. Finch, Thursday, Taking Back Sunday and The Used have all bettered this – if you’re going to take them on be prepared to have bigger singalongs or bring something new to the plate. A Static Lullaby do neither.
Three years ago I might have given this 4 – or as history shows, 4.5 – but times and tastes have moved on. So many bands have come along and moved the goalposts and, sadly for ASL, someone forgot to mention this. This is major label cannon fodder for the Kerrap generation. Sure to sell a hundred thousand, but even more sure to be dumped by the label when they finally cotton on the scene is dead. This is a very, very disappointing follow-up by a band that once looked like they could do something interesting. But then everyone makes mistakes…
www.astaticlullaby.com
Sony BMG
Paul