Review Summary: A totally biased rating, through and through.
I should hate it.
The
Dream is Over had everything going against it with me as the listener:
1. As a personal matter, drugs and alcohol disinterest me.
2. “Loser punk” in general has a rough time in my ears, especially with whinier voices than featured in Green Day’s
Dookie.
3. Lyrics make or break my experience, so dumb lines like “Your sister thinks I’m a freak!” and “I get so drunk that I can’t speak!” simply bugged me, at least on first listen.
The Dream is Over comes packed with as many flaws as its anguished narrator. Some songs center on boring subjects. Babcock’s vocals typically can’t carry whole albums; their self-titled debut suffered, growing stale by the minute, though a majority of the album ended up as a lovable as an acquired taste, an offshoot of my longing for anything like this album.
Even as I began to dig this album, especially for its technical aspects, I couldn’t imagine it on par with some of my favorites. So why a classic rating？
Honesty.
Every track comes bleeding, in distress, at least a little angry, ready to jump the listener. In an interview, the band described the cyst on Babcock’s vocal chords and the arduous journey to a surgery, and the album’s opener, the aptly titled
If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will, illustrates the feeling of the entire album. While exceptional in nature, even drawing a “this song is awesome” from my eleven year old brother who doesn’t really like punk music, killer lyrics like “I’m trying not to let you get in my head, but every line, every goddamn syllable that you say makes me wanna gouge out my eyes with a power drill” embody what makes this album a classic.
Frenetic and absolutely pissed, the honest feelings of the band come out in an organic mixture of quick instruments and clever writing. As chaotic as it might get during a few tracks, the musical education shines when considering its overall coherence. And, of course, even the slow tracks have an underlying snark that should make Jeff Rosenstock envious.
And, full disclosure, perhaps it’s that I’ve had a benign tumor in a similar anatomical region to Babcock, so I relate to the opener.
DVP always elicits a laugh with its twist at the end, “She says I drink too much Hawaiian red fruit punch.”
Doubts and
Old Wounds as well as
My Life is Over and I Couldn’t Be Happier help me sublimate some negative emotions from a long-in-the-past abusive relationship. While I don’t have the Canadian blood to pull me in with
The Coast and
Pine Point, the metaphorical transformation of one’s worst demons into the environment works better than it should, given that the concept has more than tired itself.
Sleep in the Heat represents everything about my difficult family dynamics.
Familiar Patterns struck me most during a depressive episode, rhythmic sarcasm and all.
But eliciting true emotion from me is fickle and difficult for any band, much less one somewhere between pop punk and hardcore. But this release does it, even if I should hate it.
