Attica! Attica!

Raine Maida, of Our Lady Peace, has said that he’s found it difficult to understand the difference between being earnest and being pretentious. In the case of Attica! Attica!, the alter-ego of Aaron Scott, himself formerly of Marathon and De La Hoya, the boundary between the two is crossed and then burned behind him over the length of Dead Skin / Dried Blood. Though the musical arrangements suggest Scott has talent in that arena, his vocal performances are more often than not overwrought and ridiculous-sounding, and the lyrics are, for the most part, patently absurd.

One need only listen to the first track, “Motion Sickness,” to begin sensing that this album’s not going to be one you’ll want to hear straight through more than once. Simply drudging through to hear the entire thing becomes tedious. “Am I still really here?” he asks during the album’s third track, “Frostbite.” “Even though I hate this weather and with each passing year I swear it’s my last winter, but I’m still living here with wet hands stuck in the freezer. I’ve got a choice and either way it’s gonna sting.” It seemed mildly appropriate, then, that when first hearing this song I was starting to think it might be a better choice to simply stop listening rather than endure any longer. Still, as a reviewer, it’s better to accept the sting than to give up early and miss a potential gem.

But our friend Mr. Scott has an enduring fascination with pain and torture, made apparent in track number four, titled “Tires and Mint,” which discusses, in brutal detail, a painful dental procedure performed with no novocaine. It’s horrifying in its breadth. He follows that stunning choice with “Way Down In Gitmo,” which opens with the brilliantly stupid line: “Way down in Gitmo … that’s Guantanamo Baaaaay ….” in case we’re too brain damaged after the dental surgery to comprehend. The song’s a bluegrass stomp which embarrassingly attempts to make Gitmo look like a bad place by stating the obvious in such a way that no conservative will even listen, and any liberal who stumbles on the track will be so disgusted with the disjointed rhetoric as to wonder whether one should be sent to Gitmo for the crime of writing a song this unmistakably lousy.

“Intermission,” at least, managed to calm things down with a relatively light and airy piano and violin instrumental number. For that, I’m grateful, because I couldn’t take much more of the grim progression the album had taken to that point. And “A Dirge For The Underground” picks up the album’s pace, creating a song catchy enough in its beat and tune to allow (for the first time) the listener to ignore the lyrics for the sake of the music, which isn’t terrible. That’s as good a complement as you’ll find here, because the rest of the album falls back into the same pattern. “What’s that rotten smell?” he asks at the start of “The Kid’s War.” No, it’s not the smell of morning headlines as he puts it. It’s the smell of this album.

I’ll be washing away that stench for days.

I’ll admit I couldn’t bring myself to give this album a second listen. The first was enough to show me that Mr. Scott is unable to write a song without a blatant political agenda. That’s bad enough. But worst of all, he’s not capable of writing a lyric that couches that political agenda in a way that is palatable to the human ear or worthy of sparking actual discussion. His muddled, rambling treatises fail to even preach to the converted, as the converted upon listening will wonder whether they even want to choose a side in this fight.

Bottom line: unless you’re a masochist, pass this album by.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.