The Ergs! – Upstairs/Downstairs

New Jersey has a phenomenal local scene. While yes, they are to blame for some of the mass output of emo acts that have taken over the airwaves during the course of the past few years, New Jersey is also the birth place of acts like The Misfits, The Gaslight Anthem, Lifetime, BigWig, The Bouncing Souls, and the list goes on and on. Now you can add one more band to the list: The Ergs!; who are one of the better pop-punk acts in the underground today.

On Upstairs/Downstairs, their third release, The Ergs! blast through fourteen minute to two minute long songs proudly portraying snotty vocals and a bouncy three chord beat. It is energetic, fast paced nerd rock with hints of a Weezer vocal styling played to a Ramones/Descendents musical backdrop. The songs are all about love and relationships but sang in a way that isn’t over done or agonizingly boring and it adds up for an album that works from front to back (excluding one major error but that will come up later). Songs like The Clocks, The Clocks, Bike Shopped, Hysterical Fiction and Boston, Massachusetts are bouncy, simple, and very catchy three chord pop-punk that comes and goes way too fast basically forcing you to press the repeat button. But it is in that need for repeat that The Ergs!really shine, because while the songs do tend to meld into one another after a while, you still want to go back and listen to them again.

However, despite that Upstairs/Downstairs is one of the better Ramones-esque pop-punk releases out there at the moment, it does still fall short in some areas where they should have succeeded. The aforementioned problem of blending the songs into one another does become a bit more evident as it passes through the halfway mark as many of the short songs follow the same structure and nasally vocal pattern. Luckily though, they are able to pull the listener back in with songs like Hysterical Fiction or the whiskey soaked country tune Stinking Of Whiskey Blues (Lucero fans will devour this track), the more melodic Trouble In River City and the slowest song on the record, Books About Miles David. Those songs are able to save the second half of the record which could have fallen into a repetitive circle. Another problem is the comparison between Upstairs/Downstairs and their prior EP, Jersey’s Best Prancers which seemed to have a more cohesive feel to it with more energy and stronger vocals than what appears on the full length. While the difference is unnoticeable if you haven’t heard the EP and the album isn’t really hurt by it, if you have heard the EP you just get the feeling that certain songs don’t really live up to the expectations that were laid out for it. This only leaves the one major mistake, and that’s in the final track, and title track, Upstairs/Downstairs which is an eighteen minute track that is mostly instrumental and more of a chore to listen to than entertainment and could have been left out without hurting the CD at all.

Despite those three slight problems, Upstairs/Downstairs is still a entertaining and solid release and is perfect for anyone dying to get away from the emo and hardcore acts that are sweeping the scene; after all, this is a reminder of what pop-punk really should be: fun, fast, and enjoyable.