Conceit ridden asshole critic exposed; How the 4-track ooze of the Lovejoys got me looking into an ugly mirror

Fuck man, I feel like a real shithead right about now. This disc, planted inside a folded piece of construction paper with a photo of a toddler gal glued to it, had been sitting around the basement office hell that I dwell in for more than a few weeks. I finally found the damn thing stacked under a gaggle of the usual uninteresting slop that seems to regularly grace my mailbox. I get so many shit discs these days that I’ve on more than one occasion been stopped by either friends or loved ones from drunkenly nailing the goddamn mailbox closed.

So they stack up on a shelf, nearly two-foot high, three piles, and they hover over me every time I set foot in the hole that I try and work in. Sometimes I really feel guilt over ignoring so much music – when I’m a bit grog-brained I get around to pretending that I am going to toss each and every fucking one of them on the disc player and do an I’m-sorry-here’s-the-reviews-of-all-of-your-I’msothankfulyousentthistome-cd’s. But then I actually start to listen to the shit and wind up shattering jewel boxes and furniture. My friend Lucas once came over, and after a night of burning some smoke and pouring through every last bit of what was left in my already barren liquor cabinet, set a stack of disc aflame with lighter fluid and a match. I swear to god that those jewel boxes were melted, molten masses of plastic, but those hideous platters of noise were impervious! I was able to pry at least three of the six discs out of the pile and play them. I almost scored a piece on those three discs based on their surreal durability alone (I’d figured them to be demonic, and needed to keep anything more than my already numerous personal demons at bay). But that would have meant listening to them – completely, entirely, unacceptably. Fucking bad music sent to two-bit a ‘net hack critic is the worst. Avoid it at all costs (both becoming the critic and the resulting music alike).

Soulless. That’s the way so much of it sounds today. That’s probably the reason that this hyper-psycho junk punk The Lovejoys play caught me completely off guard. Don’t Forget to Smile is the burned off copy of a record that came quietly wrapped in a homemade sleeve graced by a cutout photo of a scowling little girl. It seemed so utterly amateur that the cynical and snotty rock hipster in me just deemed it unworthy and tossed it onto the scrap heap. Christ, all I need is some more silver spoon kids playing rock star with my sensibilities…

If it were in me I’d apologize, loudly, publicly, and then I’d quit writing ‘bout this rockroll fever I’ve been ailed with since I was a small tike. Seems the fever musta broke sometime ago when I started thinking myself too good for the fuckers out there who do it for all the real and right reasons still. Let me tell ya, The Lovejoys are doing rocknroll for every noble fucking reason I can think of. Don’t Forget to Smile is the cats ass. It’s filled with joyous noise, reckless garage/basement/fuck the inexpensive and accessible technologies and just plug and play, and the thing has more punk and power pop charm than most fucking so-called professional record I’ve wasted my time on the past four years.

These cats roar on with a ratty sound that assaults their rock with the naïve tenacity of fools for the passion of music. That doesn’t mean they’re lost in the noise – they do bang and skronk like the best band in your neighborhood – it means that they write terrific tunes and forego the pretties for the simple charge of one-two-three-four-ing it and cutting into the fat of the thing.

Where to start? Well kids, there’s no real starting place, so we’ll jump off the high board and see where we land. Maybe I can point your nose and ears toward the (haha) lovely "Stop and Stare". The simple brrumba-brrumba rhythm strolls along while the singer sings about that girl who done him wrong and now done gone (thankfully, this is the subject matter on pretty much the entire disc). He doesn’t care about her, her hair, or the dress she wears (or "all the cocks that stop and stare"), he just wants her to know that she didn’t hurt, not at all. But, if she wants, or needs, that he’s so cool with the break-up that he willing to be around for her if she ever, well you know, wants to screw again. A sure-fire bust of a line that every guy thinks, and truly means, but never has the foolish heart to actually say (actually, I once did tell an ex that exact line. I can still here the explosion of laughter ringing…entirely sublime). In the howling, melodic drone of "TV Life", which kicks the disc off with a serious punch of power pop, the ‘joys present a world filled with screwed (up) kids whose lives spent as trying rewrites of sad melodramatic television (Dawson’s Creek is my pick, fill in your fave program here_________). Strangely enough, the entire disc steadily plows through this sort of an engaging plot – boy/girl/uppers/downers – its all been done before, and obviously is still being done today. The difference here is the relative sincerity. I’m not arguing that the sort of ragged amateurishness of the sound makes the Lovejoys better than other bands, what I am saying is that the Lovejoys didn’t waste their time trying to spit and polish a "product". This record was done because it had to be done –now. The Lovejoys aren’t tossing a hat in any ring looking for someone to quickly fill it up with dollars, they’re making music because they don’t have (or know of) anything else to do. They’re beating themselves against drums, guitars, and bass for no real sensible reason other than they have these songs (which are pretty damn good), they own a couple of guitars, and they want and need to make this music. Not for the world, but for their sanity. And sanity is in short supply these days, so you better hand on to what little you may have left. The Lovejoys may not be on anybody’s hit list, they may never see the inside of a real recording studio (let’s hope), or they may become the biggest goddamn thing since Green Day, none of which matters one shit. If rock and roll is the greatest "of the moment" art medium in the history of mankind, then I’ll savor this moment for as long as it lasts. I forgot what it was about rockroll that turned me on so fucking much to start with, these (I’d venture to guess bored) kids from Morristown, Tennessee got me all jacked up for a half hour about the simplicity of rockroll charm (kids is another guess – hell they could be forty-years old as far as I know. They do toss off a muted cover of the Undertones "Teenage Kicks" – which either makes them young’uns who got into Dads records, or some very odd middling aged cats like myself – and I don’t wanna ever have to deal with folks like me).

Oh yeah, "Instant Smile" and "Fast Asleep" are a couple of gems that display some real goddamn ability that probably can’t go unnoticed. So, maybe, in all of my self-anointed rock crit snobbery I won’t like the next Lovejoys record as much (if there is one). But that doesn’t really matter today, now does it?

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