with
A Static Lullaby 
By Tim Byrnes

I Hate Myself and Want to Die, Baby (In E minor) 
A Static Lullaby's new CD Don't Forget to Breathe comes on like a buzz, like that first apple wine buzz back behind the football stands, like when you were just too young to truly get anything and you thought it was all your fault and you'd steal out on a Friday night with a few bucks from the old man's wallet and you'd meet your boys by the candy store, all 15 years old with blue jean jackets covered with band patches and written on in blue ball point all your loves and hates and you'd get the dweeby older kid to buy you beer and wine and after you ditched him you'd all be sitting behind the bleachers swilling down the teenaged rotgut while admiring your own hipness and of course you'd talk about death �cause when you get right down to it what else is there?

A Static Lullaby are 5 twentysomethings out of Chino Hills, CA (Joe Brown, vox-Nathan Lindeman, guitar- Dan Arnold, guitar,vox- Phil Pirrone, bass,vox and Brett Dinovo, drums) who stand to cut a pretty wide swath across the emo/screamo landscape while appealing to the goth/mope/bad-high-school-poetry crowd as well. The boys rock like a chair, I admit it. I'm as much a sucker as anyone for supercharged guitar lines heading off in all directions while the vocals stack like cordwood into 3 part, crystal mesh harmonies who's effect is so bracing as to make lyrics like "misery is so beautiful" sound like war cries, but "misery is so beautiful" is a piss-poor war cry at best, no matter how much Mott the Hoopla you surround it with. 

Blessed with an imaginative drummer and a better than average sense of arrangement, ASL avoid the soft verse/loud chorus monotony of much �new� music, instead creating their own beast built from equal parts hardcore, goth, quasi-industrial and that whole emo-screamo-emo-core ( all sounds like the Buzzcocks to me, kids) thing that power pop's been calling itself lately.  Musically, this CD rocks. And rolls. And even swings in places. Lyrically, however, there's just too much over dramatic, �gosh-I'm-a-poet!' poor baby got his heart broke stuff like the following:

"A kiss turns to brandy
a dagger learns to cut hair
lipstick stains her addiction....." (Nightmare Wins 6-0)

and

"Shadows of demons
melt my personae 
throw me a raven
spoon out my heart"    (A Sip of Wine Chased with Cyanide)

Or this gem, my favorite, from Love to Hate, Hate to Me (Dig them crazy titles. Scary, huh?)

"Tonight I will sleep with a gun in my mouth
Goodnight, my love
(Goodnight, my love).

I'm sure that these lyrics make sense to somebody and probably seem to address their situation on a fundamental and comforting level, and if so and if you are reading this, please take the gun out of your mouth. 

Thank you.
 

A Static Lullaby - Don't Forget to Breathe
Label: Ferret Records
Rating: 

Listen to Samples and Purchase this CD online 

Visit the official website for more on the band and their new CD!