The Ramones debut album did a solid job of creating a mass following for the band. Fast forward a year later, and the Ramones release their second effort, Leave Home.
Leave Home overall follows the same traits as the previous album, fast, loud, energetic and rather simple chord progressions. However, it does contain more enduring compositions and more attention it paid to the detail of the music, whereas Ramones is for the most part, is pure speed. Musically, Leave Home is a definate improvement from the first release.
The album's production quality is infinitely better than its predecessor and the guitars are more audible with the bass being pushed more so to the background. The song lengths for the most part are largely similar clocking at just little over two minutes, but still making the album a real pleasure to listen to without having to worry about anything too complicated during the album.
In my opinion, Leave Home contained some of the most underated tracks. "Swallow my Pride" "Suzy is a Headbanger" "Now I Wanna Be a Good Boy" and "California Sun" are very sweet tracks, indeed. They're extremely catchy and contains some awesome riffage, and "California Sun" *gasps* contains a small amount of lead guitar as well. Leave Home, like Ramones also generated some instant fan classics we all know today, such as "Pinhead" and "Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment" with "Pinhead" being consideried another kind of "punk anthem" with the chant "Gabba Gabba Hey!" which had become an iconic phrase throughout the Ramones' career.
In conclusion, Leave Home is a solid second release by the Ramones and contains some great songs, most of which as I mentioned previously are very underated indeed. This is a release I think that every Ramones fan should own.
Recommended tracks:
Swallow My Pride
Pinhead
Now I Wanna Be a Good Boy
Suzy is a Headbanger
California Sun
Glad To See You Go
Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment
