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Lemaster’s work valuable to the record, for not only
did he produce, engineer and mix the record, but he also performs
on every single song. One could read this as the work of a
very hands-on producer, yet upon listening to the record,
I get the feeling The Few simply weren’t ready to tackle
the process of recording an LP.
Pop it in, and you’ll hear songs perfectly written for
the WB. The Few are the quintessential soundtrack to the parties
and romances of high school, even college, days. Jamie Zwick
(bass) can stay in the pocket and pull an octave slide out
now and then. Pauline Mu can definitely hold her own on the
drums, and she proves to be a definitive source of push for
the band, especially in ‘Ferris Wheel,’ a gorgeous
song. Jack Burnside is half-Westerberg and half-Dashboard
in his vocal stylings, and all together it makes for very
fun, very catchy and very hard to hate songs. Stand-out tracks
include ‘Blue Eyes,’ ‘Living In My Skin,’
and ‘You’re So Pretty.’ Guaranteed to evoke
tears if you’ve been recently dumped.
The problem with The Few is that we have heard it before.
The songwriting is riddled with clichés, and Burnside
seems to follow the Christopher Carrabba formula (get dumped
by a girl, and write a thousand songs about her). Supposedly,
manager Geoff Sherr was implemental in the success of The
All-American Rejects, and it’s clear he picked a natural
sequel to the tangled mop-tops of ‘Swing, Swing’
one-hit wonderism. The Few tries to operate outside the box
during an extended noise-outro of ‘Living In My Skin’
and by tying a bit of fuzz to Mu’s drum sound on ‘You’re
So Pretty,’ and ‘The Reaon’ opens with a
beautiful Stone Roses/Republica-inspired guitar riff. But
the sad truth is that we’ve heard these songs before.
They’re not bad, they’re not great, they just
may be a little tired.
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