Say No More – What You Thought You Knew

Fuck, Say No More is right. You can also add play no more, write songs no more, croon no more, emotively lament about your fractured love life no more to the roster. Please, guys, there’s an entire musical community of people not in your “target demographic” (which presumably consists almost entirely of 14-year-old girls wearing My Chemical Romance t-shirts) who really don’t want to hear this stuff.

I don’t really know what else to say, except that What You Thought You Knew sounds like the soundtrack to some godawful coming-of-age TV movie – I can totally picture the male protagonist, handsome but still “nerdy”, in the midst of some slow-motioned, montaged 11th grade existential crisis (Will he go to the party? And if he does, will he actually smoke grass like all of his friends – and the girl he really likes – wants him to? Stay tuned!) walking down deserted streets in the rain while this shit plays in the background.

Say No More is rooted much less in the annals of punk than they are the denuded, passionless genre of “modern alternarock”; pitch-perfect vocals laden with lots of whoa-whoas, lightly – oh so tastefully – distorted guitars, harmonies galore and a lyrical oeuvre that consists entirely of the girl that got away. Listening to this album is like eating an entire box of Lucky Charms that only contains the marshmallows: there’s absolutely no substance to it, but it’s still enough to make one vomit out a brightly colored jet of effluvia.

Though I imagine I’m probably in the minority here: I’m sure these guys will be huge, if they’re not on their way already. I’m sure they’ll be touring from town to town, brimming with emotional angst and perfect haircuts, in some huge bus laden with some energy drink’s logo on the side in no time flat. I mean, I’m sure they’re all handsome dudes – which goes a long way towards begging the question why it’s so hard for them to just find a nice girl that won’t break their hearts. I mean, you think you’ve got it bad, buddy? Just think of the overweight, zit-pocked grindcore kid who has just about every Bathtub Shitter 7” known to man but the social skills of an orangutan. You think you’ve got it bad in the romance department? What about him, you big baby? I just want to grab the vocalist and shake him and shriek, “Suck it up! High school’s over!”

Regardless, if the gentlemen in Say No More do meet some nice women, women who won’t break their hearts, maybe – as a band and individuals – they’d finally reach a kind of spiritual/emotional/sexual plateau in which they’d finally be happy, therefore nullifying the need to write these tepid, paint-by-numbers, cheesedick pop songs. I, for one, pray for the day.