Erik Adams
For The State News
Someone please stop Hawthorne Heights before the band destroys the art of screaming.
There was once a time when if a band screamed, it was for good reason. A scream was to be used sparingly, like an emotional exclamation point.
Hawthorne Heights shows no such reservation on its latest album "If Only You Were Lonely." Throughout 12 tracks, frontman J.T. Woodruff's pain is punctuated to the point of utter banality.
The guttural howls aren't the only things that get played out. The band does its best to keep things interesting, throwing in tempo shifts, dynamic contrasts and some serious guitar riffs, but even these become predictable.
Intensifying this vanilla flavor are the emo/screamo/post-hardcore/whatever clichés that "If Only You Were Lonely" perpetuates.
Taking Back Sunday set the genre standard for clever titling with "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut From the Team)," so Hawthorne Heights song titles such as "We Are So Last Year," "Pens And Needles" and "Where Can I Stab Myself In The Ears" (question mark curiously absent) aren't much more than prepackaged hipster punch lines.
"You are my first dissection, spilling my insides," Woodruff sings to the subject of "Language Lessons (Five Words or Less)." This being the band's second album, that's rather doubtful.
Trafficking in a musical genre that places so much emphasis on powerful lyrics, you'd think the Hawthorne boys would put forth more of an effort in this department. Unfortunately, what comes out of Woodruff's mouth are ham-fisted attempts at being cryptic and metaphors that do little to animate the themes of death, heartbreak, infidelity, distance and family strife.
"So you are the fire and I am the water," he sings on "Where Can I Stab Myself in the Ears." Pretty standard, but what comes next is simply baffling.
"I am the balance and you are the color." Like on a TV? Is that really the most biting turn of phrase for this situation? Adjustments on a television set?
As much as "If Only You Were Lonely" suffers from a lack of aural adventurousness, its final track makes the case that Hawthorne Heights might want to keep shredding and screaming. "Decembers" is the band's attempt at a "remember when?" power ballad, but because Hawthorne Heights is composed of sensitive types, it comes off as less hair band and more boy band. And the photo of the band in matching white tuxedos doesn't do much to dispel this feeling.
What is so insidious about "If Only You Were Lonely" is that on a technical level, it's not a bad album, just a mediocre one.
Woodruff's voice is tolerable, the band's playing is competent and the lyrics could be much worse. But when such mediocrity is repeated 12 times, it begins to grate on the listener.
Apparently Hawthorne Heights means a lot to Generation MySpace. Here's hoping they latch on to something more meaningful in the near future.
Something that screams better.
