Customer Reviews

The Stupid Stupid

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

hi this is ben. i sing in this band the lashes. i was getting really tired of reading the two negative reviews of our cd below so i decided to write my own review. you should still read the negative reviews. in fact you HAVE to read the negative reviews. i mean maybe they are right? heck, you might even agree with them, but if you ask me the one guy sounds like a really pissed seattle scenester, and the other one sounds like he has mental problems? his spelling is funny too, check it out! anyway, i really like our record and i think you will too!

(unless you are some pissed off seattle scenester or if you are a weird, mental, illiterate hagfish fan)

I was hanging out in a Seattle music store last week and low and behold, found myself watching The Lashes perform a quaint little in-store in front of a crowd of adoring, young fans. They were funny, sweet and gracious and stayed after to hang out with everyone and talk afterward. The singer joked about how he was still picking up shifts at the store because even though they got a record deal no one was putting "diamonds in their pockets". I picked up the CD and The Stupid Stupid, which I think is actually REALLY GOOD! I think it's kind of sad that people want to take out their personal grudges by reviewing this album as bad. I love indie music and the northwest music scene and liked this album very much. The first song, Death by Mixtape, had a clever, observational quality that really threw me off. My favorite is the second track "Ex-Mas (Young in Love)" which does sort of remind me of being young and in love. "It's never been easy to be young and in love they say..." Funny, catchy, silly... I loved it and I don't care if my fellow grown-ups hate me for it!

Let me just say, I'm not a Seattle scenester, I'm not illiterate and I don't like the Lashes. Sorry! I found a copy of this EP in the used bin at my local record store so I thought I'd give it a spin - it was only a couple bucks. Needless to say it's going back to the used bin. Imitating the Strokes and the Killers is really played-out right now. What's the point? These songs are derivative with a capital "D". The world doesn't need one more moody-looking band with perfectly styled hair doing an inferior version of what's already out there. The music itself is almost passable but the lyrics are really DUMB! It's like reading a 12 year-old girl's diary. Even my friend said "It sounds like these guys are about one year too late." The Lashes are so derivative and unoriginal I almost suspect they were "manufactured" to be popular. Absolutely soulless.

im not going to lie, but i got hook with that first song in the cd.. then....i said "what is this??" no good at all after first song, and this review is from a person that haver heard many good pop punk bands from hagfish, big drill car, green day ,zoinks etc.

It's fun, sweet pop music! Don't you like fun? Don't you like sweet? I mean, are you really going to believe the guy who said that there's no soul in a 12-year-old girl's diary? The Lashes are either so good that we're talking about them or so awful that we're talking about them. I opt for the former, but even when people choose the latter, the Lashes are apparently worth talking about. Get educated - invest $6 and figure out what everyone's talking about!

(Note: I'd like to edit that to 3.5 stars.) So, I didn't really like "Death By Mixtape" the first time I heard it. I didn't really like it the second time I heard it. Maybe not even the third. But, I still kept playing it. And then it was stuck in my head and I couldn't get it out. So I bought this cd. No, it is not the best pop album I've ever heard. But, yes, it is well worth the six or seven dollars it cost. It's four really, really catchy songs that are just fun to listen to (gasp!) and play over and over. You should definitely check out the band's full-length, "Get It," too. This cd shows the band is good, and "Get It" shows how much better they've become.

Scenester, hipster, WHO CARES? The Stupid Stupid is a spectacularly chewy example of the kind of bubblegum power pop that anyone who has ever loved Redd Kross should hear. Hey, Ben--who's always got your back?!

This band tries to copy everything that's currently cool and fails miserably. Their unoriginal (and ultra-cheesy) power-pop may fool the average MTV teenybopper, but trust me, this really is awful stuff. What was Lookout Records thinking? Believe it or not, two of the songs are loving tributes to two different Seattle rock critics in a boot-licking attempt to win their favor. It didn't work, and in the process, every musician in town knows what kind of hustler's they're dealing with. One song is about how hard it is to be a rich scenester boy in love. BLECCCH! To make matters worse, their phoney-baloney press kit compares them to The Cars and Elvis Costello, and guess what, they sound NOTHING like either one. Don't say you weren't warned.

The above mentioned alias to my intuition wrote for a local newspaper called THE STRANGER. Sounds like some major a$$ kissing for a hometown band of hipsters (they were featured in a fashionable urban clothing store advertisement I saw recently.) Anyway they were hyped up for a couple a years before signing a deal. Seemed like they never played any shows around here in Seattle. I wonder why...

This is one of those weird manufactured bands - y'know, the kind that never really toured or played much or released much - and then suddenly, mysteriously, they're signed to a major label and making more money than your parents. First of all, these guys are upper-middle-class hipsters who pretend to be poor. It's a schtick. Having lived in Seattle, I've been privvy to these creeps up close. Ben Clark is not struggling I assure you. Their music is lightweight pop-fluff that tries to adopt the surface appeal of punk without being the slightest bit punk at all. They have no identity of their own, and somehow it all feels way outdated. It's those slimey major labels with their cynical idea of what makes money - they simply regurgitate what's already popular until the well runs dry. They don't care about creativity. They just want stupid disposable pop for stupid mall kids to spend their money on. Some greasy white guy in a polo shirt thinks he knows what teenage girls like and so the rest of us are stuck with yet another boring disposable hunk of plastic junk. All this while truly talented deserving bands go broke. Go spend all your money on the Lashes!