Various Artists – Take Action! Volume 8

For eight years now, Hopeless Records and Sub City Records have put our a yearly compilation titled Take Action! to coincide with their Take Action with five percent of its suggested retail price going to a charity. It used to always be a suicide prevention charity, the National Hopeline Network or 1-800-Suicide or something similar and now it’s DoSomething, a charity that helps young people make a difference in their community. Each year you could always expect to hear what was growing popular in the underground at that moment. Just flipping through the old CDs I was amazed at the bands that appeared on them and thought “my God, these are great CDs” as I skimmed over the track listing.

But now what’s popular in the underground has changed. It’s changed a lot and as I look down the track listing for Take Action! Volume 8 I don’t say “My God, this is great.” Instead I say, “Damn, this is gonna put me to sleep” and, for the most part, I was right.

You see, Take Action no longer comes packed with bands like NOFX, Ataris, Hot Water Music, Thursday, Thrice, Dillinger Escape Plan, Rise Against, Anti-Flag, Senses Fail, Alkaline Trio, Good Riddance or anything like that. Now we get generic pop-emo (with a heavy, heavy, heavy emphasis on the pop aspect of the sound) like Cute Is What We Aim For, The Spill Canvas, Anarbor, Every Avenue, Bayside and All Time Low. Boring.

Plus, you’re no longer treated to a score of unreleased material either. In a day and age where you can get everything online for free, you need to give someone a reason to go out and pick up a CD. For compilations, the hidden gems and rare tracks were always that attraction. On the first Take Action! compilation, they had 18 unreleased or rare tracks. On the eighth installment they have a total of three – one of which is the highlight of the entire album which proves that some unreleased stuff would’ve made it a bit more attractive. But no, as it is, all the songs are already out there and the three unreleased songs are also quite readily available. After all, two of them are just live versions and Meg & Dia‘s Halloween has been on their MySpace page for over a month now.

The record just lacks an attraction. If you want straight bang for your buck, then it’s a good deal. Nineteen songs plus twelve music videos on a DVD for less than ten bucks is a good deal. But you’re paying simply for quantity and not quality. Tracks by Emery, Versa Emerge (who sound exactly like Paramore) and Meg & Dia are palpable but the danceable, electronic dribble that is Breath Carolina is painful to listen to and when I hear someone sing “pitter patter on the rooftop” like Cinematic Sunrise does, I instantly cringe.

Most of the bands on here are bland, generic, forgettable, boring and, in some cases, painful to listen to. Despite it’s good cause, it’s a bad compilation which looks even sadder when held up against it’s predecessors.