Elkland - Apart (Cover Artwork)
Staff Review

Elkland

Apart (2005)

Columbia


Chooooo Chooooo!

Get on the Cash Train everyone! We've got enough shittastic dance-punk on this single to make you want to shoot anyone who tries to utter the words, "DANCE PARTY!" Leave the dance music to the professionals, people.

For those of you afraid that Columbia Records wasn't going to ride the wave of the future, then you can quit your qualms. This band is as marketable to the MTV crowd as three naked guys singing about pubes, screwing moms, and pooping is.

Think: the Killers, pt. II. Think: four sceneters trying to sound like Depeche Mode. Think: shitty Casio pop with a "dark" side. Think: asstabulous press sheet writer who references Joy Division, the Smiths, New Order, and Björk and says things like "The group recorded all the album's electronics using vintage gear exclusively..." Think: the Faint, but if pussy-ified. And let me tell you, the Faint kind of smells like tuna already. Offensive? So's this recording.

Honestly, who sends a single to Punknews? Do we look like the kind of webzine that appreciates radio/MTV-friendly singles? Oh, and did I mention they covered the Cranberries' "Salvation?" They did. And it seriously sounds like a preset beat on the keyboard that I got in third grade for piano lessons. Shit. I should have pressed it more often, then maybe I could have gotten a contract with a major label and raked in the sweet, sweet cash while sixteen-year-old girls were drooling over my whiny voice when they watch me on the TV.

You know, dance punk used to mean something. Gang Of Four, Q And Not U, other groups that I'm too lazy to cite...they all had something. What we have now is a furiously terrible cash crop prime for the picking. Dear God I just hope that you don't ride the wave.