After giving my speech about well-rounded music labels and how it's hard to trust EVERYTHING a label puts out, in the case of Midtown, I decided to listen to them because I trusted their label, Drive-Thru Records so much.
This record was a nice change of pace from the sugary s/t New Found Glory record that I had recently worn to shreads ; a little darker, a lot scream-ier and clearly more punk rock influenced. But by all intents and purposes, it was your a-typical, early 00's pop-punk record. The tracks were smart . . . almost too smart. . . well rounded pop songs with flawlessly cohesive lyrics. However, it was one of the first records that I had to listen to in order, or else it wouldn't feel right. That was due largely in part to having one of the best album opening tracks with "Just Rock and Roll" (touting the first, instrumentless chant of "God I wish I could hate you for the rest of my life!!!") and a simple, melodic closer of "Frayed Ends."
The irony in all of this is that Midtown ended up having a fairly bad, and fairly public, break up with Drive-Thru Records (see: message board flame war. . . remember those?), then releasing on a major before disbanding all together. The lead singer now heads up the pop punk characture, Cobra Starship, while drummer Rob Hitt opened up his own label and DJ's miscellaneous clubs around New York City. It's one of those "oh hey, remember when ______ was in __________?" kind of bands, but I hope the neon glow and MTV VMA nominations for Cobra don't drown out some really smart musicianship on this record.
I could go on about this record for hours. I'm not sure if there are many records I've listened to more times than this one.
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