Paul Newman & The Ride Home - The Importance of Being Earnest Hemingway
Paul Newman & The Ride Home are a Baltimore pop-punk combo who want to ruin your afternoon.
There’s only so much flat vocal delivery you can take in one album. It’s mainly a problem for “serious” pop-punk bands. The trap which always closes steel tooth’d around the ankle of these bands is the chorus.
“Chorus”, in “serious” pop-punk-land means “wail something vague flatly and maybe do a bit of half-hearted shouting”. Sadly.
The album has other issues:Â
1. It sounds like it was recorded in someone’s carpeted bedroom - while I appreciate any kind of DIY ethic applied the whole thing sounds drowned.
2. They’re not the black-lips. But then, who is? If you’re going to be messy you need to make me smell the reasons why, the cracked leather jackets, cooking blood and snot; the usual stuff.
Redeeming features include: the optimistic and cheerful rythm section; flitting bass-breaks save much of it, providing a powerful and diverting backbone to what otherwise is a fairly standard pub-core fare.
OF COURSE THIS IS BULLSHIT: LISTEN, DOWNLOAD (NAME YOUR PRICE) AND VOMIT HERE
