BoysLikeGirls – Love Drunk

BoysLikeGirls are scrapping the bottom of the barrel with their new album Love Drunk. They’re reaching deep in there, pulling out every cliche lyric, overdone harmony and mixture of pop melodies, infusing it with a tinge of intensity in hopes of pulling off the pop-punk moniker and ultimately releasing a painfully generic pop album.

The record pulls in from all spectrums of the pop world, so much so that the opening track – Heart Heart Heartbreak – is basically a bad Backstreet Boys or NSync rip off. Every track is chock full of computerized effects, keyboards and programming. Vocalist Martin Johnson is desperately trying to sound like Patrick Stump, particularly on The Shot Heard Round The World which does sound remarkably like a Fall Out Boy bside; but all the auto-tune and falsetto studio gadgetry in the world won’t make him capable of reaching it.

Lyrically, the band never tries anything new either and instead sticks to your generic love/relationship woes style of writing. Gems like “And now she’s got a boyfriend / and I’ve got a rock band / guess nothing really ever goes the way it’s planned, yeah” and “I used to be love drunk / but not i’m hung over/ love you forever / but now I’m sober” are just a few of the highlights you can expect to hear throughout Love Drunk.

Each song is an exercise in futility. I’ve sat through the record four or five times now and that’s more then it even deserves. With each passing listen, the record becomes more dull and aggravating. Sure, it normally falls purely into the background (luckily); but when it does come through it just feels so fake. Like an extremely bad HelloGoodbye copy-cat with a heavy dose of All Time Low mixed with computerized effects and digital voice-coders, Drunk Love is just plain boring and occasionally irritatingly annoying.

Basically, BoysLikeGirls‘ Love Drunk is a pop album for twelve year girls to play as they scream their hearts out over the singer’s dreamy looks; but in four years, all those twelve-year old girls will completely deny every liking the album. Hell, at least people will admit they listened to Backstreet Boys (and everyone in the world knows at least one of their singles) but once BoysLikeGirls become a thing of the past, no one will ever have the balls to admit they ever listened to them – they’re just that bland.