Backside Slappy - No More Sad Songs (Cover Artwork)
Staff Review

Backside Slappy

No More Sad Songs (2005)

Escondido Street


I can't recall ever hearing such a token pop-punk band. I mean, this is bad. Real bad. I love that kids in garages everywhere really love music, and want to start their own bands, and get their music out there, I do. But if this is the kind of result that comes of those kids starting bands, I say hell with it.

These aren't 13-year-old guys learning how to play "I Wanna Be Sedated," these are twenty-something-year-old-men, making songs that should never even have been recorded. I'd like to first say that these guys are real lucky they did not include lyrics in their liner notes, because I would currently be having a field day. I'm able to catch random snippets about rumors, skateboards, and life being over, but if I was able to piece together all of the terribly sung words, then the real fun could begin. Alas, I have only the singing to judge.

Off key, off rhythm, and just generally off, the vocals don't have any sort of change in vocal inflection, or even pace to speak of. The singer seems to know one key, one rhythm, and one pace, and any time the instrumentation deviates from that, he's left looking silly. Instrumentation however, is a word I'm using pretty loosely with this band. "At the Pub" is the perfect example of the complete and total lack of any style or substance. The band uses two chords through the entire song, making the song grow stale after about...oh, thirty seconds or so. It's not that I'm against simplicity, as there's bands who pull that off extremely well; what I'm against is a band who seems to not even give a fuck.

Not once, in all twenty-six minutes, do I get even the slightest inclination that this band gives a fuck;

We just want to say to you, fuck off and goodnight.
That would be a fittingly apathetic way to close the album, but no, there's more! "Here We Go Again" continues the painful album, as the chorus is repeated roughly 26 times before the album actually ends. Good Lord, never again.