Review Summary: This first stumble for an apparently jet-fueled group stands as proof that even long-distance runners eventually falter.
With their first three albums, the Ramones established themselves pretty firmly as a lynchpin of fast, fun, bubblegum rock’n’roll. With their torn denims and crunchy guitars linking them to punk, but their melodic sensibilities harking back to 50’s and 60’s pop, the Queens foursome created something really unique, which was introduced and cemented throughout their first three albums. Any of those albums is presently considered a mandatory listen for fans of punk, hard rock or rock in general, their attitude and songwriting quality warranting them a place among the greats of the rock world.
Road To Ruin is not one of those albums.
Of course, with four albums released in a little over two years, creativity was bound to start running dry some time. Similarly, musical innovation and experimentation are welcome most of the time, especially when following up an album as near-perfect as
Rocket To Russia. It is, therefore, hard to fault the group’s logic: if the previous formula had been taken to its zenith on the previous album, let’s introduce a brand new one to start exploring! Unfortunately, this plan backfired, and
Road To Ruin can be seen as the only weak spot in the Ramones’ otherwise pristine early discography.
On the surface, the album shows every sign of wanting to take things to the next step. A better production, with more details and additions, points to that intention, as do more rounded-out sets of lyrics. Gone are the days of stringing two sentences together and calling it a lyric; the group still invest in repetitive sections, but now they mostly flesh them out with different verses and bridge sections. Likewise, in the musical chapter, there is some experimentation with solos and rather understated keyboards in tracks like
Don’t Come Close or
Questioningly. And all these signs would be quite positive, if not for one small detail: the album is
BORING.
That’s right, with so much new stuff to accomodate, something had to give, and unfortunately that something was the songwriting. Sixty to seventy percent of this album consists of material so bland and unremarkable, it makes stuff like
What’s Your Game or
I Don’t Care sound halfway decent. More frustratingly, every now and then there is an actually good song strewn in the mix, apparently poised to usher in a new, better portion of the record, which unfortunately never materialises. In the end, the listener’s reaction ends up veering between disappointment and indifference – feelings a Ramones record had never before elicited.
Things do start off promisingly. Both
I Just Wanna Have Something To Do and
I Wanted Everything eventually overstay their welcome, but for their first few bars they are decent, fun songs, which sound like they could have been part of the less remarkable, backup tracks from
Leave Home or
Rocket To Russia. Unfortunately, things quickly take a turn for the worse, and the next few songs
Don’t Come Close to the quality levels of their predecessors (pun intended). In fact, out of the entire first half of the album, only
Needles And Pins and – arguably –
I’m Against It really stand out. The first is one of those Ramonized covers that always work so well, and this case is no different, the track undergoing the group’s punkifying treatment without ever relinquishing its poppy, syrupy nature. The second is a fast, bouncy track with great lyrics, which may not be a standout, but is not unwelcome either. Unfortunately, other than these two tracks, the entire first part of the album is unremarkable in every way imaginable.
The second half, alas, fares little better. Of course, it
does include
I Wanna Be Sedated, probably the only really relevant track on this album, and deservedly a hit for the group; but unfortunately, the rest is just as hit-or-miss as the early songs. The end stretch does bring us a couple of genuinely fun songs – the simpler
She’s The One and the lyrically brilliant lost gem
Bad Brain – but they are not enough to atenuate the disinterest levels created by songs like
Go Mental,
It’s A Long Way Back or
Questioningly, basically an inferior copy of
Needles And Pins. To be fair, some of them do grow on you eventually, but most continue to irk you to no end, and none of them ever touches the best material on
Ramones or
Leave Home. The bonus-edition material is equally inconsistent, and adds very little to the overall impression the album leaves.
In the end, then, this album is best surmised by a simple fact: even though it is about as lenghty as the previous three, and has about the same number of songs, I find myself bored to tears through long stretches of it – and
that never happened on any of the others. It’s not as dire as the likes of
Pleasant Dreams or the turgid
Subterranean Jungle, and the Ramones would recover from it to release one last great album to end the series (and the
Century); but, as a first stumble for an apparently jet-fueled group, it stands as proof that even long-distance runners eventually falter.
Recommended Tracks
Needles And Pins
I Wanna Be Sedated
She’s The One
Bad Brain
