Various

Less Than Jake Limited Edition Tour EP (2003)

jamespastepunk

This one comes fresh off Less Than Jake's 2003 November US tour, with unreleased tracks from Less Than Jake, Fall Out Boy and Punchline. Rufio and Yellowcard both add tracks from their latest cd's, 1985 and Ocean Ave, respectively.

There's good and bad with this CD, sadly more of the bad.

There is ALOT wrong with this CD, namely its price. 5 bucks for 6 songs might sound good, but the quality is quite suspect.

Punchline's song, much like them sounds a lot like Taking Back Sunday, Brand New and Midtown. Put simply, if you've heard any of those three bands, you've heard Punchline. If bland had a sound, it would be Punchline.

Fall Out Boy's track, an acoustic version of "Grand Theft Autumn" is a textbook explanation of why unreleased tracks are unreleased to begin with. As an electric song, it sounds almost good, but the acoustic version just slaughters the song and leaves it for dead. There's a catchy chorus, but the pop-punk with truly random screams is getting crowded, and this track does nothing to distinguish Fall Out Boy from the pack of "me too" bands out there.

You already have an opinion on Rufio, so if you like their stuff, "Don't Hate Me" is another song by them, if not, just skip it.

Now for the tolerable.

Yellowcard's "Hey Mike" is catchy the way a softcore band is supposed to be, but fails to add anything in lyrically, so you're left with an unnervingly catchy song that you want to tear out of your head. Otherwise, they seem to scream "We're only an average pop-punk band with nothing new to say, BUT, we have a violinist, so maybe the kids won't notice how mediocre we are".

For the good?

Let's face it, you bought this for the unreleased Less Than Jake material, a version of Brightest Bulb with Billy Bragg, a person who I had never heard of before and for their unreleased song "Sobriety is a Serious Buisness and Buisness isn't so Good".

Hearing an older, British voice on Brightest Bulb is quite an improvment, and it adds something to the song that should have been in Anthem. My only gripe about the song is that Mr. Bragg and Chris didn't do a chorus together.

Now, for "Sobriety". It's a 50 second song, which dissapointed me greatly. I wanted a longer fucking song for the 5 bucks I paid for the compilation. That being said, the song is fast, loud, and up to Less Than Jake standards, Losing Streak style. It's a good song, but I felt cheated after listening to it. It's comendable that Less Than Jake put out two truly unreleased songs on this comp, but, truth be told, I'd rather have a longer song, ala, ASAOK on the disk. But, the quality of those 50 seconds is quite, quite good, so I can't complain too much.

Should you plunk down 5 bucks for this CD? I don't think so. If you've got a Napster esque program, pay 2 bucks for the two Less Than Jake songs, and skip the other ones.

Other: the art on the CD is top notch, and is a strong point in the CD's favor, but its not enough to make you want to purchase it.