Casual Cogitations

Yep, my new years resolution: making reviews in the music scenery on just about anything. Anything but Hip-Hop, Trash Metal, Rap....errr maybe at least keep away from those morally depraved teens that believe they're making music by simultaneously hitting two trashcans together. Anyway, on to the first ever album review!!!!

I like to divide up the genre of pop punk into two subcategories. On one hand, you have the deep and profound bands – those like Say Anything or Brand New – and on the other, you have the plentiful mass of sunny-eyed, catchy bands – ala All Time Low, The Maine, We The Kings, etc. Both sides have their quirks and positives, and despite what may be the initial belief on the subject, the population of listeners throughout the world is probably divided almost evenly when it comes to the number of those that actually enjoy each side of the genre. There is a right way and a wrong way when it comes to the bands actually crafting their music within these sections, and unless the band is trying to push the envelope and create something original, many outputs – particularly those on the catchy side of pop punk – tend to follow a similar format and formula when it comes to the creation of the band’s album.

I’ll get right to the point: We The King’s Smile Kid follows the successful formula for a catchy pop punk release almost perfectly. The band isn’t Radiohead – or Brand New for that matter – and they aren’t out to create something original. The band is just doing what they learned to do with their self-titled debut: the band is just making a summer album for teenagers. Lyrical subjects are what you would expect them to be – growing up, girls, and summer – and the emotions that come across from the music fall into the category of the mysterious and often unsettling area of angst.

The opening track should all but cement what I have said thus far: ”Do, do do, do do, do do do…” follows behind a catchy pop punk riff, and the chorus to be found here is loaded with hooks and many possible interpretations:”She takes me high, she takes me high…” Suffice it to say, the song could certainly be the anthem of those searching for love and affection. We The Kings continue from there on and deliver summer anthem after summer anthem. “The Story of Your Life” is riddled with a naïve type of hope – the kind that only someone who hasn’t been hit with the negative side of life talks about – and for what it’s worth, I can certainly see a lot of girls falling for Travis Clark’s lyrics that encourage them to run away with the singer. As far as switching it up in terms of sound, “In-N-Out (Animal Style)”, with a healthy ammount of sexual innuendo in the title, has this reggae edge to the verses that later connects with the type of chorus that can be found throughout the majority of the album: catchy, hopeful, earnest, etc.

While the majority of the album is a happy and hopeful anthem affair, there does happen to be one moment where the band slows down a bit. “We’ll Be A Dream” features a duet between Travis and Demi Lovato, and while the track does evolve into another anthem for better and hopeful times, you wouldn’t be incorrect in calling it the album’s ballad. Unlikely as it may be, the album’s closer may be the best example of a catchy, pop punk song. A jingle-bell type of pop punk riff enters the track, and the chorus accompanied by sets of well-placed: “Hey, hey, hey, hey!” make for the album’s defining track.

Smile Kid is an album of hope that is full of desires for better days. The band has decided to take the relative success of their self-titled debut and tweak a bit, creating an album that’s meant for the summer season but will have to do for the months of winter instead. As mentioned, the band follows the format for a successful and catchy pop punk release almost perfectly, and those interested shouldn’t expect anything below or above that threshold of quality. Listeners should be warned though: the contents therein are full of sugar; it is best that this album be enjoyed in small doses if this is your type of thing.

If you've had more than your fill by now of those cookie cutter, tearjerker music biopics that follow the inevitable trajectory from rough roots to fame, a fall from grace and final redemption, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story may just have the cure. And it's about time. This satirical tongue-in-check musical, spoofs movies like the Johnny Cash weepie Walk The Line and Ray's over-the-top emotional frenzy, while parodying with a vengeance the whole mystique of celebrity sainthood. Move over, Britney Spears.

John C. Reilly does Dewey Cox as an initially troubled, hilariously beer gut middle-aged teen, courtesy of a makeup department that deliberately discarded the usual ridiculously youth-enhancing makeovers here for its over-the-hill stars, relatively speaking. In a wacko Abel and Cain setup, Dewey suffers second-class status in his dysfunctional backwoods family to favored brother Daniel. One day while engaging in a little fantasy swordplay in the barn, Dewey possibly not so accidentally severs his resented sibling in two. And it's a strangely comical disaster which seals his fate as family pariah, doomed to wander the earth a moody and moping sad sack, when not happily jamming on stage.

The movie, directed by Jake Kasdan, was co-written by Kasdan and the productive Judd Apatow, and they do an interesting thing: Instead of sending everything over the top at high energy, they allow Reilly to more or less actually play the character, so that, against all expectations, some scenes actually approach real sentiment. Reilly is required to walk a tightrope; is he suffering or kidding suffering, or kidding suffering about suffering? That I'm not sure adds to the appeal.

Walk Hard, with its raunchy comedy skit-to-screen sensibility, not surprisingly has its frequent ups and downs, but with the buoyant moments offering plenty to forgive the more stagnant interludes. Among the coolest high-lights count the variously drugged Dewey indulging in controlled substance group activity with participants parading around in assorted states of undress; and his encounter as a little kid with some seasoned elderly bluesmen in the woods who hand over the guitar, and novice Dewey's belting out a number in raspy baritone like a pro who's eight going on eighty.

Then it's on to an early gig during his loser period, worshipfully mopping up a black folks' disco. Inevitably of course, Dewey drops janitor duty and begs his way on to the stage the one night that the main attraction rapper calls in sick. Not quite getting it that he's the only white guy on the premises, Dewey indulges his own inner rapper with some off-color race lyrics - just the way the house star always does it - and ends up, well, getting the Imus treatment, to say the least.

Equally radical but tame in intent pulled off by Apatow and Kasden from just about but not quite going off that rude deep end, is a mock-lewd episode of nasty gyrations on the same house floor. And the devilish duo is not at all shy about taking what's really going on with those highly suggestive moves, to what might actually be marinating in the dirty minds of those too much information, sexually charged dancers.

So outrageous is the equal opportunity putdown of all those music biopics in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, that they're not likely to ever be taken seriously again. Which could leave Hollywood in a panic tailspin into rewrite hell this winter, or at least potentially stalled in script-by-committee mode. And by the way, Dewey's music isn't too bad either in the movie.