There's this little "woo" on the opening track that's at the crux of my consternation on this one. An aside, a "woo!" noise without the exclamation point. I've never heard anything like it, it felt squeezed into the half measure, a little out of breath. On one hand, a forced aside read off a cuecard. On the other: a more overproduced album would have found a better take -- maybe a poorly executed gesture of sincerity left on tape is its own kind of sincere.
I want to kiss you on the mouth, a little bit too hard, sings Wil Wagner, and that's the perfect example of the kind of overwrought bluntness that you've got to wrestle with. The boys feel what they're playing, they're just a little disconnected from punk rawness, infected by a kind of Mountain Goats reach for something more eloquent, a Los Campesinos grasp at infinite pathos -- indie pop gone big riff, some untold generation of emo.
The 45 minutes feels longer. When it was over I said "I'm glad that's over" out loud. It's a big dumb shouty mess. I don't think I liked listening to it very much. But fuck, it's sincere. It screams and reaches. It whiffed on my heart guts, but I love that it tried. This feels more pointed at winning fans than selling records, and in some tortured way I like it because I didn't like it. On the band's wikipedia page Wil has a Menzingers shirt on and that feels about right 3.5/5
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