Bottom Line - Eloquence

Genre rock Publisher Nice Guy Records External Links Official Website Nice Guy Records

In a recent magazine interview, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age said that he has lost interest in punk rock. He said that punk is overburdened by formalized rules by how it has to sound and that it doesn't allow much for creativity.

In a lot of ways, the band Bottom Line follows the new punk rules with its album Eloquence. Now for a punk band to be relevant, it needs a couple of ballads and preferably a song with a cello on it somewhere. Bottom Line has done just that.

Simply put, punk-pop has now been power-poppified. As a result, punk purists will clearly despise this band just as they probably do the torchbearers of this movement, bands like Fall Out Boy, Yellowcard and The Used. This is punk but with less of an emphasis on attitude and more of an emphasis on melody.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with this. I think Fall Out Boy is quite good actually. But if a band is going to make it playing this way, it better have good songs, or it's going to sound indistinct and just like a million other bands.

Bottom Line is simply okay. The songs are decent, and the lyrics, while filled with good vibes, each sound like a lecture on honesty. The band's too modest to be pretentious or preachy, but they also sound like they want to have one foot in the Christian rock mainstream. The guitars bite down, and the drummer overplays somewhat.

They follow the rules of their oeuvre. And that's not necessarily a good thing.