Reviews

The great comedian, Patton Oswalt, has a theory about the kind of comics you would get an open mic: People who clearly have acts and are just struggling, mental cases who wander off the street and people that are funny but who gives a fuck? I would throw Minutes Too Far in the latter category. The band's debut album, Let It Roll, could be said to be full of "pop-punk gems" or "amazingly catchy alternative rock" well in my opinon neither really fits. It seems as if Minutes Too Far took Jimmy Eat World's classic album, Clarity, and turned up the tempo and the screaming a little and went in a poppier direction.
 
Minutes Too Far does really stumble on some catchy ideas like on the lead track, "Something You Really Ought to Know", has a killer guitar lick, just enough angst and a catchy enough chorus to become a left of field single on MTV. By the fifth track, "Love is a Dance", the band has already showed us all they can do. The 1st track, Something You Really Ought to Know", shows them at full-rock bombast, the 2nd track is a slower more experimental song, the 3rd track is mid tempo and the fourth is there faster rock song to play to get the crowd going. After that they just revisit those ideas for the bulk of the disc. 
 
This cd is impossible to talk about without mentioning the people behind the scenes. Several tracks were produced by former Animal Chin/The Stereo frontman Jamie Woolford. Woolford's ear for catchy pop music definitley has a strong influence on the group. One of the track's that Woolford produces, "Rock and roll is dead" sounds like it could be a Stereo track mixed in with some older school Green Day.  Also, the album was mastered at the legendary Blasting Room in Colorado, which is run by Descendents and former Black Flag drummer Bill Stevenson. The record was also mixed by fellow Descendent/All member Stephen Egerton. This was a very smart move on Minutes Too Far's part. It may have cost them a little extra money but they placed themselves in the hands of some of the best underground and not to mention pop-punk hands in the business. In short, not the greatest disc out there but it does the deed. If you need some hard rocking pop music to fill the hole that The Stereo left than you can check this out.