House Boat are at it again, those wily bastards.
If you're not a dork who listens to pop punk, you may not necessarily know who House Boat are. I mean, if you're reading Idle and the Bear, it should be a given that you actually DO know who they are. I don't know who are audience is, though. You can pretty much tell simply based on the fact that my writing voice is simply awful and impossible to latch onto. But yeah, House Boat. They're a band, and stuff. A band which is comprised of members of The Steinways, The Ergs, and Dear Landlord. Basically, they're The Steinways (same songwriter, vocalist, guitarist), but as a pop punk supergroup or whatever. So, if you're familiar with The Steinways (which, once again, you probably should be), you more or less know what to expect when it comes to House Boat. Simple, catchy songs with clever and arguable awesome lyrics. I mean, I (more often than not) prefer House Boat over Steinways. I just think they're in general a better band. It's weird that I'm using parenthesis a lot in this review, considering The Steinways are known for having parenthesis in a lot of their goofy song titles. THIS WAS A LONG PARAGRAPH.
House Boat's most recent full length is this whole Thorns of Life thing. It's 14 songs in length, which is bad ass, because the more House Boat the better. It's pretty much entirely what I already described House Boat as. A bunch of catchy pop punk songs about crushes, life being shitty, being old, being a loser, and everything else most of us relate to. Well, I'm pretty young. But other than that.
You know what else I predicted about this album that totally came true? It's fucking awesome. The songs are infectious and shit and as nifty as ever. I mean, it'd be a way cooler move for me to just diss this album and say it sucks and that they need to grow out of this pop punk phase or whatever. But I just can't. I'm a fucking dork and pop punk fanboy. I can't do much about that. I've tried. It didn't work out so well. Now I have three extra arms and an addiction to catchy pop punk played by underdogs who are overrated and underjoyed. Or something stupid like that. Keep in mind, I don't know what I'm talking about.
Honestly, you can just listen a few songs really quick and get a pretty decent idea of how great this album is. I mean, it's all streaming on their bandcamp page. Just go to that page and listen to these songs, and then be like, "oh shit, I need to buy this album."
- A Song In Which I Try To Convince Myself To Stop Being Such a Fucking Idiot.
- Throwing In Those Weird Chords Did Wonders for The Copyrights and The Dopamines.
- Now We Are 31.
- Terminally Unique
- Barkmarket Fuckacy
The awesome thing about "Now We Are 31" is that it features vocals from the entire band, including Mikey Erg.
The awesome thing about "Barkmarket Fuckacy" is that it's a part four to songs that are on the other releases. It also has Zach from Dear Landlord singing in it.
The awesome thing about this review is that it's over.
-Idle
Fruitmarket Fantasy (Missed the Boat)
ReplyDeleteFuckmarket Pharmacy (Gorilla Marketing)
Dumbmarket Travesty (The Delaware Octopus)
Wouldn't that make Barkmarket Fuckacy part 4?
(and if we're assuming they're all based on Screeching Weasel's "Supermarket Fantasy" one could go as far as to say it's part 5)
The awesome thing about this comment is that this is the first one I've left for this blog even though I've been following it for awhile (and now I'm using parentheses to signal that reading this blog was a pseudo-inspiration to write my own reviews (just not as many...yet))
Also, this album rules. Even if the cover is just a black and grey version of Television City Dream
ReplyDeleteYeah, you’re right about it being part four ha. I forgot. I wouldn’t consider it part five though...since it’s just influenced by that Weasel song and it’s not the same writerrrrr and all. But yeah. I don’t know. It kind of is part 5 in a way. regardless, I changed it to part 4 haha.
ReplyDelete