Review Summary: Although they pretty much wrote the soundtrack for a 13 year old girl's birthday party, they do it so smartly and calculated that you might want to keep listening.
The first thing I noticed about FTSK's Underdog Alma Mater was the obvious school references. On the inside of the lyric booklet, pictures most likely pulled from MySpace of fans supporting the band grace a whole page like a collage. Then came the songs, which mostly contained lyrics having to do with breakups and the evil that is womankind. By that definition alone, FTSK could easily be lumped into the massive pile of up-and-coming emo acts that write sophmoric songs about love, while sounding like carbon copies of emo bands already on TRL. And also very easily, someone could compare their synth-worship to the likes of Hellogoodbye. But there is something different about Forever The Sickest Kids. Although they pretty much wrote the soundtrack for a 13 year old girl's birthday party, they do it so smartly and calculated that you might want to keep listening.
Forever the Sickest Kids is a six piece powerpop group that dance on the line between punk-pop (awful term, but it's the only way to describe it) and just completely sugar-saturated pop. The album opens with "Whoa Oh! (Me vs. Everyone)", a catchy, bouncy that doesn't make as much use of the synths as on the rest of the album, but still makes an impact with the mindlessly catchy chorus and lyrics like, "I've got friends, in highly low places..." The next track, "Hey Brittany", follows in the same vein as "Whoa Oh", but out of nowhere, a cheesy, 80's power ballad-esque piano pops up on "My Worst Nightmare". It then launches into a electronic-beat-laden powerpop anthem that has confusing lyrics like "I never did what you said that I did when I was gone..." Who did what, where and when? The song manages to show the bad side of Underdog Alma Mater, being that they could reach cheesier, stomach-shriveling pop noises that would make the Backstreet Boys want to sue for stealing their act. However, these moments of sheer pop glory eventually grow on you or get outweighed by the good songs on the record. Tracks like "She's A Lady" and "Believe Me, I'm Lying" show the potential in this band as potential Top 40'ers, but with enough going for them to make them recognizable from the rest of the electro-pop acts on the radio. Overall, the band's debut is pretty good...being that it's a debut. The band clearly is still feeling around and building themselves as artists, and to make a debut like they made with Underdog Alma Mater is great. Obviously, they might want to turn the keyboard useage down slightly, but as a new band, they can and have already proved they make good, catchy music with some cliches, but not enough to make them a bland new emo band. Keep a watch on these guys, they'll be commanding the charts in a matter of years.
