Houston Calls - The End of an Error

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Houston Calls - The End of an Error

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Houston Calls is kind of like the Two-Face of bands; on one level, they write catchy pop punk music that is actually pretty good. On the other level, once that music is done, they find some way to make it not as good. You should still listen to them, though.

Reviewer
Brad
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Music

Reviewed by Brad Cook

Houston Calls - The End of an Error

Houston Calls used to be a ska band called Face First. That's how I know about them, that's why I like them. When they first split up and became Houston Calls, they put out a four song sampler with some of the best pop punk songs I've heard in a while. Needless to say, it was exciting; I thought I'd found a new favorite band (this was when I was like... sixteen). Then they started putting out songs in their finished quality, the songs that would actually be on their full length release, what became A Collection of Short Stories. I'm not sure how, but the band had transformed completely from what they started as, in a very short amount of time. Seriously, they managed to take a fast paced, slightly edgy sounding pop punk song and make it into an unbelievable piano-based pop song. The rest of their songs got a similar treatment.

That's why, when I found out Houston Calls' new album was to be called The End of an Error, I once again got excited. Hoping that they'd realized what wimps they'd become on the last album, I ventured into the first song, Modest Manifesto. It was a faster song, more rough sounding, like early Houston Calls. It was great. The lyrics were slightly juvenile, but if that's the cost of having songs with some semblance of testosterone, so be it, I thought. Even the second song, "Life Won't Wait" (Rancid? what?) sounded alright, really radio-friendly, but nothing as lame as the final version of A Line in the Sand (the aforementioned transformed punk song -- I don't mean to rant but it's literally so bad. It's like they gave the song a sex change). So that's great and all, it's a bouncy pop punk song, also filling the role of their first single. The lyrics weren't even that bad: "Life won't wait for me to get back on both my feet again; it just might sucker me into the new, and flip the switch on everything I do." Yeah, it's all been said before, but they found a slightly new way to say it. The next song, A Shot in the Dark came on and I felt absolutely nothing for it. Still don't. It's about at this point that the album loses most of its solidity. The next few songs are almost nothing but cliché, mostly unoriginal pop punk songs.

This is the one area that The End of an Error fails even harder than the first. While the first was full of wussified (replace that w with a p for what I actually think) songs, at the very least the songs were relatively original. They had interesting hooks that actually kept you wanting to listen. Many of the songs on this album I listened to multiple times trying desperately to grasp onto anything great, but I was left with nothing to hold on to. For example, the song Things Are Happening is a basic pop rock song, with a two second long piano part registering as the only unique part of a boring song. Stay With Me Tonight is more of a tender piano song, but instead of going all the way piano, they half-assed it and made it a tender pop-punk song with guitar and drums. I Fancy Abroad has a clever title and little more. Nagoya is actually one of the better songs on the album; the main guitar part is a trade-off between the two players, one playing the lower, power chords while the other plays the higher pitch, lead chords, and they alternate. The chorus is huge, with tons of people singing some of the parts, and it's actually pretty catchy. After that comes Behind The Gun, another piano-based rock song. Nothing new, nothing good. Abandone is the last good song on the album, rocking a drum 'n bass rhythm with some standard claps in there for good measure. The last two songs are You Can't Simi, and The Oaks On Prince Street. I don't know what Simi is, unless they're just making fun of Japanese people, but again, the song isn't as clever as the title. The final song, The Oaks On Prince Street, in no way lives up to its position. It's a decent song, slightly catchy, a bit less formulaic sounding, but it's nothing overly special. In fact, The Oaks On Prince Street is almost a metaphor for the entire album: it starts out promising and slow, gets loud and faster, then dies back down again and never reaches its full potential.

So a lackluster sophomore effort for Houston Calls solidifies the fact that they can't decide who they are or what they should be. It almost lacks more personality than their debut. I understand that they want to be a modern, new-wavy pop punk band, but when you only have ONE song with a synth in it (Abandone) when you started out as a synth-rock band, you're not doing that well. Entirely too much piano, not enough synth. The production is a bit slick, but it's not as bad as on A Collection of Short Stores. And I was a fool for thinking that not every song would be about a girl this time around. As much as I will probably always love this band, the music is really for like, 15 year olds at this point. The messages are mostly hackneyed and over-pondered at my age, and the music didn't keep my attention very well.

Houston Calls

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