The Working Title - About-Face

Genre rock Publisher Universal External Links Official The Working Title Website Universal Records

It may seem that I place unwarranted importance on the city of a band's birth, but I think that Ian Brown's "It's not where you're from, it's where you're at" maxim is useless. You can never quarantine the past, as Mr. Malkmus says. That's why Big Black records sound like obsolete machinery using sheer muscle to kill you (Chicago), why Dashboard Confessional sounds like Jimmy Buffett on downers (Florida), and why the Working Title sounds like a bunch of frat boys who got popped dealing Ecstasy, got sent to Charter Winds, and met some really fucked-up kids whose stories they later used to go all James Frey on their new album's lyrics. That's right, they're from Charleston, South Carolina.

I was unfamiliar with the trauma-inducing entity that is South Carolina emo. Yikes, The Working Title! I would normally say screamo, but there is no screaming, only a genteel, restrained whine and lotsa-lotsa sub-Duran keyboards. And the lyrics! They're a cross between Dave Matthews and that Verve Pipe song "The Freshman" with a side of Verizon Real Ringtones (okay, I'm just taking it out on Verizon Real Ringtones 'cause they have a surfeit of bands called Cute Is What We Aim For and whatnot, but only one Manic Street Preachers ringtone. WTF?). I'm looking at you, Track Six. In the "The Crash," singer/lyricist Joel Hamilton envisions several scenarii in which he's senselessly killed without ever having known love. A random dude in the first verse "started shooting everyone inside/oh my God I'm gonna die alone," and all I can think of is that short story by Tobias Wolff, "Bullet in the Brain." So obviously Hamilton must've sassed that guy with the shotgun and conveniently left that out of the song. The idea of that is actually much more intriguing than the song (sorry, I know he was going for the Grand Hypothetical). Of course, the next song, "Something She Said", is about the drummer's mother dying, so now I feel really bad for saying that. Oops. First Horace Pinker and now The Working Title-are emo boys killing their mothers for material? I'm gonna have to explore that path.

This might all be marginally forgivable if the music weren't so pedestrian. And really, "My heart is naked for the first time" needs some oomph behind it to avoid complete suckage. But it's just the same quiet/loud/piano-for-emphasis-but-wait-you're-not-Keane-or-even-The-Fray-so-just-shut-it-where was I? Oh, yeah, I feel like I heard this pumping out of the Pi Kappa Epsilon frathouse on Milledge Avenue when I was in college eighty billion years ago. So I'll leave The Working Title to the youngsters, 'cause I'm too old for this shit.