A Is For Ape
Once More Over the 617
Tuesday 24th of March 2009
Once More Over the 617 takes me back to a couple of summers some time in my teens when watching people roll up and down a half pipe, occasionally attempting to grind along a long metal bar (and almost always hurting themselves when they did), seemed to be the order of the day. Those days seem to be set to a ska soundtrack of gleeful trumpets and pop-punk guitar riffs in my mind and I think it is such carefree, sunny times that A is For Ape has tried to capture with these three tracks. Unfortunately for the band, however, my time spent at the skate park was not due to a like of either skating or ska but simply because carefree often equalled having nothing to do back then.
The first two tracks 'Once More Over the 617' and 'For God's Sake Say Something' are your typical happy-go-lucky ska tracks, composed of the essential ingredients posited above, and as such don't seem to have progressed far from the sort of stuff you would expect from bands like Goldfinger in the mid to late nineties. The lyrics are of the "we're facing problems but we can overcome them" vein and are pretty poor, made worse by the faux-American accent of the lead singer although it must be said that the brass across the whole EP does in fact sound pretty good. The last song 'End of an Era' moves closer to the Caribbean roots of ska and sounds a lot more mature and heartfelt than the previous two, possibly because (Judging by the dedication after the track listing) it comes from a different, more real, place.
Although it tries to grasp something of the excitement, happiness and freshness of youth, Once More Over the 617 ultimately fails to deliver; lacking in originality the EP's attempt at a happy sound simply creates something that is, for the most part, embarrassing to listen to.
Author: Jonathan M
Label: Self-Released
Found in: Record Reviews
Official Rating
We rated this record 2.5 out of 5.