White Crosses -- Against Me!

i would love to hear what warren oakes true honest heart-felt opinion of this record is.

i wanted to like this album. i wanted to like this album SO badly. everyone counted this band out. new wave was it, the band sold out, they sucked, they were worthless now. no. i constantly told everyone they were wrong. yes, new wave was overly polished, but it wasn't bad. just all of you wait. they still got it. tom gabel plays a show on the 4th of july, 2008. holy fuck, these songs are awesome. hell, i read someone say "these are the best sense the 'cowboy' and 'disco' days"....i agreed.

i shoulda known when "heart burns" came out. this band was toast. the songs i loved, the songs i got kicked out of a local club for playing (anna is a stool pigeon is apparently too political for a festival dubbed "infringement"), were just too good to be true. we need drum machines, we need over-production, we need to fuck these great songs up. bottom of the line, great songs turned out awful on record. but my hopes weren't given up. there were strokes of genius. "cowards sing at night" sounded great, as did a few of the others. and the tour tom went on, man the sets were brilliant. he was playing what the fans wanted, he was tom from against me! again, not tom gabel. he was who i grew to love.

i should have known it was too good to be true.

fast forward from 2008 to 2009. i'm still defending this band, hell, they're playing house parties and tiny-ass club/basement shows again. baby, i'm an anarchist! they go on tour with CHEAP ticket prices. new songs appear on youtube and in bootlegs. fuck! they sound great. hell, there's this song tentatively titled "hot shots" with a fiddle and it might be the most bad ass thing i've ever heard. there's a few cheesy songs, especially one about suffocation in the modern western world, but there's enough heart and spirit in the performance that i can get past it. hell, against me! is back and proving everybody wrong!!!!!
oh wait.
tom gabel's blog shows up, saying he wants warren out of the band. warren leaves, does the thing i would forever expect someone as class-act as warren to do, and says he appreciates everything he had. again, I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!

so now white crosses is available to hear. it's out there. it is what it is. and it is everything i SHOULD have expected but nothing that i DID expect.

where's hot shots?! where's the heart those bootlegs had? it's overproduced, it's glossy, and honestly, i don't know where the heart went from the band that i considered to be the most genuine in music.

White Crosses (3/5) -- my opinion of this song has not changed sense i heard it on record for the first time. the hook is awful, the lyrics are cheesy and the musicianship is that of a very piss-poor pop-rock band. this bad pop-rock is a trend that unfortunately will carry throughout the album. apparently, this is the "new sound?"

I Was A Teenage Anarchist (3.5/5) -- i had heard this song in the bootlegs pre-album leak. i didn't mind it. i never truly held a grudge on the band for not being so die-hard anarchist. tom became very liberal, which i didn't agree with, because political parties are the downfall of this country, but everyone grows. the band was young when they were so die-hard, and i looked at this song as a "yeah, i know where i came from" song. on record, it isn't that. it's uninspired "piss off old-time fans" music. it isn't there. it shuns the old fans and wreaks "i've lost my muse"

Because of the Shame (3.5/5) -- now i need to say i spent a lot of time letting this record sit. it leaked a couple weeks ago, and i even took the time to sit down and listen front-to-back while reading tom's lyrics he posted. this song is one of the few genuine tracks you'll find on the record. obviously about someone he used to care about, this song is one of regret and memory. it is what it is, it isn't a great song, but is better than much of the album just because it carries legit feelings.

Suffocation (3.75/5) -- i spoke of this song above. i never truly loved it, but it sounded solid on the bootlegs, it was very inspired sounding. this is a perfect example of over-production should not be part of against me!. this song is weak as fuck on record, and the "ugh" after the first "suffocation" in the chorus is legitimately laughable. but, one saving grace for this song is the continuation of a story tom penned many years ago. it seems very likely that this song is a continuation of the gay couple from "disco before the breakdown" (the song), "searching for a former clarity" (the song), and "the ocean." in that context, it gives the song a little bit more depth.

We're Breaking Up (2.5/5) -- tom gabel is now happily married. he talks about it in his blog all the time. who is this song about? warren? i hope not, warren was way more bad ass for a song that sounds like a piss-poor simple plan song. this song wreaks "i want to be a popular pop-rock band, but don't know how to do it." this song is hard for me to even get through.

High Pressure Low (3/5) -- after i get past the opening riff, which sounds like one i wrote after playing guitar for a couple months, when i was trying to write my first songs, it KIND OF comes together. if you read the lyrics, it tries to inspire and it tries to stand for political opposition and criticism, but again, the over-production just sucks the life out of the song....and that main riff is so piss-poor.

Ache With Me (4.5/5) -- one of the few high points of the record. new wave was a decent record, even though many shun it from existence. but one thing it lacked was acoustics, something every other against me! release had. this song is seriously solid. it could never fit in with the first few records, but who's asking it to? bands grow. this is a progression i could have been okay with. unfortunately it's only one song, and it's one of the few that sounds genuine. decent song. decent song.

Spanish Moss (3.5/5) -- this song is one that doesn't honestly make me feel one way or the other. it was originally a 4, but after listening to it, the bridge sounds very forced. this song could be filler on a good album, but on a medio-core album, this song is one that is very listenable.

Rapid Decompression (4/5) -- i suppose this song is the "single." and i suppose it's a good idea on behalf of tom and what's left of the boys. it's pretty close to the new wave sound, and has more aggression than most of the album combined. it isn't a bad song, it's pretty decent, but some of the background vocals are very forced and are just way too much to handle. it really is one of the best on the album though, and that isn't just because it sounds more like against me! than the rest of the album.

Bamboo Bones (4.5/5) -- at first listen this song would have been just another piece of shit on the album to me, but after giving the album 2 weeks, this song is far and away the best song on the record. it has heart, it has a good riff, it actually has decent lyrics and a decent message. this song is the perfect closer on the album much like the ocean was the perfect closer on new wave. unfortunately, white crosses isn't up to par with new wave, and bamboo bones isn't up to par with the ocean....but this song is really good. this is the only song i ever see myself wanting to listen to after i listen to the entire album.


IN CONCLUSION (3.25/5)
i wanted so bad to like this album, but it suffers so bad from a change of style that does not fit this band. this band has effectively shunned it's old fans and has tried to build a new image for itself. and this image doesn't work. against me! was never a pop-rock band, hell, it wasn't even a pop-punk band. i heard someone say in an interview with tom on a canadian rock station (102.1, the edge) that thanks to against me!, punk rock is alive and well. maybe 5 years ago, but at this point, against me! is the poster-child for punk rock being something that is no longer relevant. and it hurts me to say it because i used to think this band had more heart than any band making music. the old tom gabel, even from the searching for a former clarity days, would beat the piss out of this tom gabel.

life, karma, and the death of pessimism

when conan o'brien went off the air, i really took his final remarks to heart. yeah, it may sound stupid, but the guy got choked up and what he said really effected me.

"nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. but if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen. i'm telling you....amazing things will happen."

now i've taken this and i've tried to apply it to my own life but for the longest time i would doubt it. i've always been a pessimist, and when i would see the worst people in the world just constantly succeed, i would doubt conan's thoughts on the issue. but maybe he's right. and the idea of "karma" didn't just come out of thin air. it came from somewhere. so, while trying to maintain my positivity, i widened view of the world. the scumbags get theirs. look at all the political scandals right now. congressman massa is only the latest of a slue of scumbag politicians finally getting what was coming to them. elliot spitzer, rod blagojevich, governor patterson, the list goes on. tiger woods, another example. these people weren't kind people, they were terrible people. with the exception of tiger woods, odds are the others lied and cheated their way to the top, and now they are getting what they deserved.

karma is a legitimate thing and i'm believing in it more and more the more i look for it. another example, my current place of employment. i've vowed to make it the last corporation i ever work for. the home depot, i suppose it's high-end retail. but regardless, there are a lot of great people who work there as normal associates. many are kids like me, many have other jobs, many are retired. a lot of the managers....lazy, incompetent, and unintentionally unsympathetic. these people's lot in life as an assistant manager of a retail store is proof of what conan o'brien said. they didn't work hard, they weren't kind, they were lazy, and they got what they worked for.

now i looked to see how far i could apply this, and i've been meaning to write something about my great grandma who's been battling cancer for over a year, and maybe this is the time to do it. but a curve ball was thrown my way last week when my aunt died unexpectedly. i instantly thought this had something to do with all this. she was young, i believe 39. she was over-weight, she wasn't the nicest person to be around, and she seemed to have ruined my uncle and detached him from the family. we never saw them, not even on christmas. once, maybe twice a year tops, and they only lived 10 minutes away. it's sad, it really is. and maybe karma did have something to do with it, but i can't speak ill on her, because it isn't fair that she left behind a husband who truly loved her and two kids who were still in high school. that's way too young to lose a parent, regardless of the circumstances. i went into the funeral unemotional but felt being there was the right thing to do, but seeing that family cry their eyes out at the church was tough for me to watch. i tried to talk to the younger boy, but seeing i don't know him at all, it was tough. but, to tie a running theme, all i told him was to stay positive, be a good person, and life will get better. of course, easier said than done. i know from experience.

now back to my great-grandmother. she was diagnosed a while back, and at one point she was in the ER. she wasn't supposed to make it out of last year. she wasn't supposed to make it through summer. a month ago i went and visited her and the news i was hearing made me feel it would be the last time i ever see her. what do you say to someone when it might be the last time you see them? well, according to her, "i guess no one can live forever." it's hard to have that kind of an optimistic sense of humor in her situation. but with her memory fading and her motor skills suffering, she still is one of the most kind people i've ever met. and i think that's why she's exceed so many of the doctors timetables. it's pretty crazy.

so it's time to bury my pessimism 6 feet down. at least most of it. i think it'll always be impossible to get rid of it completely. but optimism is working out, i like being happy. you can't ignore the bad things in the world, you need to still address them or nothing will get done, but there's a lot in life you can change by having a better outlook. karma is something that can be a good motivator. i am nowhere near the best person i know. i feel i have all the potential to be if i wanted to. and i definitely get mine when i deserve it for being a bad person, and i think everyone will sooner or later (i'm looking at my father on this one, just hopefully it won't be too serious, just enough that he realizes his own personality flaws).

so here's to life. lets all try and go out of our way once in a while to be there for people. i mean, the other day i bought the guy asking for change outside wilson farms a bag of chips (unfortunately he was gone by the time i came back out). but hey! it's the thought that counts.


currently listening: brad paisley, noah and the whale, new alk3

coming soon: against me! -- white crosses. a review in the style of the one i did for daisy