Reviews

I am not too familiar with Hawthorne Heights, or their material from before this album.  I remember once catching their video for Ohio Is For Lovers on TV, and thinking “Hey, cool!  Victory!” before the channel was changed. I mean, I like Victory Records: a great history, an owner who tells anyone/everyone to suck it if they try to pull power plays, and some amazing current bands: BTBAM, Dead To Fall, Comeback Kid, Bayside, and The Sleeping. The only downside to these pluses is Hawthorne Heights, an almost platinum selling nu-arena emo band that effectively subsidizes all these other excellent releases with their sub-par, but highly-selling music. If Tony Brummel can convince enough kids to buy If Only You Were Lonely so that Darkest Hour can continue to put out amazing album after amazing album, then more power to him. I’m a little sad to see half-tempo ballads with terrible lyrics, a boring vocalist, and three guitarists who never play anything that would require actually having three guitarists being passed off as ‘punk.’
 
Chances are that you will see/hear/be subjected to the single, “Saying Sorry.”  Now this is not actually a bad thing, as it is very representative of the albums tone overall, and will give you a chance to judge for yourself.  Think: poppy (but oddly slow) drumming, a melodic voice that sounds like it was fed through a entire wall of malfunctioning vocoders, a very light touch of hardcore screaming, and an extremely simple song structure augmented with many little flourishes.  That’s right, you’ll hear weird keyboard stuff, lots of overlapping vocal tracks (ala TBS), and lyrics that give ‘emo’ such a bad name.  So take a listen when your little sister plays the single, or when you’re in Urban Outfitters and this comes on over the PA.  If you’re down, the whole album is pretty much more of the same.
 
I’m really hesitant to bash this album too much, for a number of reasons. One being sheer numbers - as in the number of records this is being predicted to sell week one: 200,000. That’s a lot of people to piss off, a lot of angry e-mails full of “STFU” and “PLZ DIE.”  Second being if you put aside how this is being marketed (“Indie Rock, Post-Grunge, Punk Revival” according to aol.com) and put aside the migraine inducing lyrics and vocals, then this isn’t a half bad piece of bubblegum rock.  Better than corporate rock, for sure. The third reason not to bash it is this: Tony Brummel looks like kind of a big guy, and with all the money he’s going to have to throw around after IOYWL drops, a plane ticket to California to hand deliver an ass kicking isn’t too far-fetched.
 
Ultimately though, this album deserves its bad review.  HH’s music is just so easy - and yet it still sounds so poorly played. The drummer must have a morphine IV hooked up next to his snare, because the drums drag like a club foot. The lyrics could have been cribbed from a junior high school pen pal (“I miss you most of winter mornings”). If Only You Were Lonely is totally inoffensive and totally banal - the two worst crimes a band, “punk-revival” or not, can commit.