Playlouder - Music is the Network

For reasons unknown, Matt Skiba's Alkaline Trio still haven't managed to be the all-conquering bastion of acid-tongued pop punk they frankly should be. They've never been anyones favourite band; for those who like their power pop laced in goth bollocks and eyeliner always hopped over to the vastly inferior but more authenically gloomy AFI, for those who liked their catchy hooks and MTV high-jinks were never going to swim against the Blink tide, and by sheer chronology, the mohawked buggers who hit puberty in '95 wouldn't dream of looking past your NOFXs and Offsprings, and for people who loved to have a great time, the pitch black humour of Alk3 winners like Private Eye, Stupid Kid or Queen of Pain were never going to jostle for position at the frat party with a sniggering A-ha cover. They still, which is even harder to understand, haven't crossed into the public conciousness enough to trouble the hit parade, on this island at least. 2005's Crimson spawned the only two top 40 hits, but was flagged as a turning point for the band - it was the first album their fans didn't love.

Three years is a long time for a band whose simplicity has been their greatest strength - who can't spot an Alkaline Trio song from 100 paces? - at least 75% of each album has the same tempo, at least three melodies lifted from the previous long player, and entertainingly black lyrics aimed squarely between self loatching self-deprecating misery and 'Funnybones'. None of which has ever been a bad thing, the Alkaline Trio have always been somewhat encapulated in their own blackened bubble Agony and Irony makes a fitting moniker for their return; it's almost certainly going to be their most successful album to date and not underserved for their track record, but ironically it's simply not good enough to warrant it. Take opening track, for instance 'Calling All Skeletons', which not only labours under the weight of it's cheerlessly predictable title and chorus, but is more or less bereft of spike or bile, a forgettable swarm of 4/4 minor chords which flatlines after two minutes. First single 'Help Me' doesn't raise the game either; a two-note piano twitters around the opening bars, not unlike Crimson stinker 'Time to Waste' and then doesn't go anywhere. Whether this is a case of time's unkindness or whether the songs are as uninspired as their surface value suggests is up for debate, but what's apparent is that after an upward incline in which the trio of Skiba, Dan Andriano (who now share almost equal vocal dutes for the first time) and Derek Grant continually pushed their own boundaries a little at a time, culminating, in this writers opinion with Crimson's Sadie, this is the sound of a wall being hit.

There are chinks of brilliance; for one thing, the accusations of overproduction should be brushed aside - this time it works, and there's a neat par of back-to-back mid album 'I Found Away', which builds around a devellish pulse, and sounds bafflingly like Bloc Party's Flux, and pivots around an ascending melody and glorious chorus, and it actually works. It also encorporates the sort of stupid spoken-word introduction from the warmth of Satan's belly, and although it's safe to assume the floor of both Alkaline Trio and AFI has been wiped clean as a motherfucker by Gerard Way and his number one hits, this is a worthy challenge, although like the aforementioned 'Sadie' will no doubt be relegated to middle-distance obscurity and won't receive the Michael Bay directed hypervid on high rotation treatment they both richly deserve. Other highlights include the pathetically titled "Love Love Kiss Kiss" which trundles around a theme for the requisite 3.5 minutes without actually finding it, but remains and entertaining ride nonetheless, and "Do You Wanna Know", which can't quite make up it's mind what time signature it want to be, but the verse has echoes of fan favourite 'Radio' and comes attached to a heavenyly chorus. But these, disappointingly, are exceptions rather than the norm, and even compared to the lofty peaks of previous Trio albums, are a little watery and wafer-thin. The final three songs are so forgettable, I've had to re-read the tracklisting six times just to recall the titles, and even now you couldn't pink one from the other in a blindfold test.

So whilst it's not the end of a beautiful and glittering career, and nor is it, to coin a cartoonish metaphor, another nail in the coffin. It is, however, a really not-very-good album for which a three year hiatus has proved a total Black Parade shaped hinderance, for which an album of below-par shots at their target market, that are agonisingly average. Oh, the irony