The Sleazies

If you’re going to be cute, you better have a whole lot of substance beneath the joke or else you come across as the joke, and if that’s the goal, then the joke better be funny. Trite Ditties and Meaningless Crap is just that, an attempt at being cute that succeeds in literally wearing the moniker of meaningless crap. Pseudo-punk songs supporting pseudo-jokes about drug abuse, degenerate sex, and suicide come across as a desperate attempt by a mediocre band to have a niche in the music world, and to think The Sleazies actually charge people money for this crap is nauseating.

Hailing from Providence, RI, The Sleazies bring a record that is a half-hour too long filled with mid-tempo tunes that are so far from rockin’ and so far from humorous that the only dangerous element is the appropriately named title of the record, and unfortunately for the listener, the rest of the record is not nearly as clever. Stiff and uninspired playing makes the music absolutely forgettable, the singing is about as everyday as it gets, and the lyrics, oh man, Mike (bass, vocals), Jami (guitar, vocals) and Josh (drums) must have the personalities of wet farts to spend time not only penning these words but to spend money cataloguing them for consumption. Hearing a punkr sing, “Gonna make your sister watch/Gonna make your sister watch/I’ll let her play with her crotch/Your little sister’s gonna watch” is like hearing a football player make racist jokes. The real crime here, with these songs, is that they lack any semblance of charm, and charm…are you reading Mike, Jami, and Josh? CHARM, no matter how disgusting or offensive you wish to be, is what makes it work. All that’s here is some cut and paste punk songs with stupidity slapped all over. On “Truck Bomb” they stick random names together preceded by the word ‘kill’, such as, “Kill some junkies in the park/Kill some lovers after dark/Kill your cat and kill your dog/Kill Elmer Whipple’s favorite hog”. Excuse me? There are rape references, songs about hard-ons, and not one of them is actually disturbing or exciting, which makes this record a complete waste of time, money, and words.

So with that said, The Sleazies’ Trite Ditties and Meaningless Crap is just that, except without the tongue-in-cheek tinge that, I’m sure, was intended. And if it is supposed to come across as it does, then Mike, Jami, and Josh need to find something better to do with their time.