USELESS SMILE by SLOPPY HEADS

“You suck.  You suck so damn much.  You suck all the love out of my heart.”  No, it’s not profound.  And it’s not super-edgy.  But there’s something here.  Something very cool.  Something that sounds a bit like Liz Phair at her best.  Something that feels a lot like Yo La Tengo (and they are students of the band).

The album can feel a little random.  Very quiet songs lead into sing-along, punky anthems, and then go into something pure pop.  But don’t trust the pop.  Because in their potentially hookiest song, “The Suck,” they get going and then suddenly move into crunch and feedback, submerged, only to resurface back to clean hooks and harmonies…And yet, like Phair’s earliest work, it feels sexy and intentional–a feminist seduction.

A great record!

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