Cheaper Faster - The Complication

Genre rock Publisher self-released External Links Official Website

These dudes are like that kid in high school who spent all of freshman and sophomore years listening to Led Zepplin, wearing five different ZOFO shirts and sketching the Zep tattoo he'll get the day he turns 18. Then the first day of junior year he comes to school smelling like Drakar Noir and wearing the Alice in Chains Facelift shirt and dirty jeans. It goes on like this until he completely disappears for the second half of junior year only to reappear the last week of the year wearing a sharkskin suit. That couldn't last either and one day the kid melts down in the cafeteria, throws a pudding cup at the hall monitor and bolts out the side door. He returns for the last day of school dressed like Meatloaf.

Nobody is too hard on him because he plays guitar and stays out of everyone else's business. He spends all of his free time writing lyrics about finding love in the eyes of the angel. Senior year he forms a band that sounds exactly like the Toadies. The band plays a few parties and gets everyone involved at least a couple of hand jobs. They break up and the Meatloaf kid goes to Tibet for a year. He leaves his ruffled shirts and scarves behind and comes back with a new philosophy. The next band he forms, with the drummer from his high school outfit, sounds like the Toadies again. He's loosened up considerably, however, and finally feels comfortable singing some of the lyrics he wrote back in the day. Stuff like: "What you got to be mad at, high school girl/What you got to be mad at in your high-five world."

His band is totally comfortable with playing anything bland and alternative, but he can't settle on a singing style. The deep sliver of him that wants to wail like Layne Staley also knows that he's incapable of doing so, so he subconsciously adopts the singing style of whatever is on the radio that mirrors any given song. The buttery, boring-as-hell, alt-rock drawl works wonders for every moderately-paced number and for the livelier stuff he grabs the Casablancas-cum-Jagger swagger--to little-effect. The band runs in circles for half a decade--playing keggers and sports bars--before everyone gets full-time office jobs and the kid is forced to become a solo artist. He moves to a nearby college town with more coffee shops and finds landscaping work.

Cheaper Faster is a lot like that and The Complication proves it.