End of the Century or; when the poppiest punk group meets the craziest pop producer. Spector wanted to impose his legendary Wall of Sound on top of the binary semantics of the Ramones. The association is quite natural as the Ramones' love for surf music and 60s girl groups is not unknown. So, while we have some typical Ramones tropes here (Joey's voice, the punky energy), this sometimes sounds a tad too much like a 60s homage rather than a 1980 Ramones album: the opening track, while very cool on its own, truly sounds like the Ramones compromising to the mad producer. Same goes for the quite cheesy Baby, I Love You cover. However, when the two worlds learn to let each other shine, we have songs like Chinese Rock which is a fire banger, where the pop structure lets the punk yell its message. So overall it's aight with some missteps here and there, but it's a cool album although the formula is spotted quite easily.
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