Review Summary: Every Avenue's faulty process in creating their Bad Habits ultimately leads to the album's very undoing.
“I feel like the last record had a little bit more of a pop vibe to it,” David Strauchman told
Alternative Press earlier this year regarding Every Avenue's 2009 release,
Picture Perfect. “You come and see Every Avenue live, and we’re a rock band, we’ve always been a rock band.” Follow-up
Bad Habits, then, according to Strauchman, is Every Avenue's attempt this year at sounding like that very live band he spoke of Every Avenue as being: “We just wanted to make a record that sounded like us getting together and playing these songs live in a room. I feel like that is what we did.”
The end result disagrees with Strauchman to be honest, however:
Bad Habits sounds nothing like a band playing live with each of its members in the same room, much less the band's members even writing the songs themselves with each other in the same room either. Every Avenue seem to think that making the vocal melodies weaker, without changing the instrumental tempos and dynamics of their music, therefore makes their music harder, or rather rocky-er – which is ridiculous. Granted, lyrically the band is more hard-edged and, uh,
mean, you could say, but this doesn't make Every Avenue any more rockin' than they were two years ago.
On opener “Tie Me Down”, Strauchman pleads to his - or someone's - woman to “tie me down and f
uck me up, baby / rip my heart out.” And on “Fall Apart”, a cut that would have easily sat in the fold-out chairs of
Picture Perfect's sunny beach party, he angrily declares: “I want you to fall apart like I did / You to hurt for all of this.” Indeed, gone are the
We The Kings-like lovey-dove-y tenderness of past records: Every Avenue are lyrically pissed, but their music ultimately betrays them, though. “Hit Me Where It Hurts” is full of hand-claps but comes along with forgettable hooks and cheap instrumental reprieves as well, and “I Can't Not Love You” betrays Every Avenue altogether with its sappy lyrics and Strauchman's baffling attempt at being
Elton John. Where's the music's harder rock edge on that one, boys?
The lack of flow and consistency that's missing on
Bad Habits can be reasonably explained by what Strauchman told
Alternative Addiction last June: “I just wrote whatever the hell came out of my head and [made] it sound like us.” That surely proved to be an unwise move when listening to the album, but then the singer even goes on to state that “sometimes we ended up with a song that sounded too Country or too poppy, but it was just fun, there was no stress that way.” This songwriting philosophy for
Bad Habits explains why there is sloppily a complete 360-degree turn for the whole album in lyrical moods halfway through the album's length that occurs between the desperate and horny “No One But You” and the longing and hurt “Only Place I Call Home”. It also goes a long way in explaining why there is a noticeably slower and less consistent second half in comparison to the first as well. But the process does not, however, offer any logic as to why it would lead to the creation of a better album overall for the band at all - quite the contrary, actually.
Up until now Every Avenue were arguably the best band playing this style of summer pop-rock, showing up the likes of
We The Kings and
The Maine with ease. Tracks like “Tell Me I'm A Wreck” and “Picture Perfect” were Top-40 singles in the making from the last album with the same name of the latter song, and a ballad like “Saying Goodbye” would have even fit nicely on a dramatic love scene on a chick-flick of some sort. But
Bad Habits, however, proves to be an album that's really no more than its own title: Every Avenue are going to regress in status with this one, and if they keep making “rocking, live-sounding” albums likes this one with bad-habit songwriting processes, pardon the pun, their future is a sure dead end. Best learn to mature properly, guys, or go back to making the music that you're actually good at making. After all, that's all that anybody wants to hear anyway.
