The Lashes : Get It

Listening to The Lashes’ debut album, Get It, made me want to have a cigarette, and I don’t mean that in the post-coital sense. It’s the kind of smoke you require after a car accident, when you realize that the wreck was entirely your fault and you are about to get slapped with a hefty lawsuit and insurance bill, so you sit there taking in a deep drag of Nicotine and “…fuuuuuuck.” But, in less dramatic terms, Get It is the kind of album that you listen to when you’re not in the mood to pay attention to lyrics; actually, it’s more of a CD that you listen to when you’re not in the mood to pay attention to music at all. Listening to the CD in its entirety four times in a row, I have yet to remember a single melody, let alone any of the lyrics. And even though the music can be catchy at times, there is no passion, no depth to the album whatsoever, relegating it to little more than pleasant background hum.

If Interpol’s lead singer Paul Banks and The Killers’ lead man Brandon Flowers were to have a lovechild, it would probably look something like The Lashes’ Ben Clark. For some reason, all of the lead singers emerging in this crazy decade seem to have that oddly idiosyncratic voice that doesn’t match their faces. It may be odd, but it’s extremely fashionable in radio-ready “indie” rock. Having a “different” voice is the new pink.

If this CD had come out three years prior, it would have had a better chance of becoming more popular than I predict it will at this point in time. With artists like The Killers, Rooney, and Interpol already sitting comfortably in their Chuck T’s and in the hearts of post-emo teenagers, The Lashes will have to kick and punch their way out of the banality that they have constricted themselves into: tight jeans, worn-out shoes, and long, messy hair.

If you’re too broke to go out and buy Get It, you can just show up at an Open Mic Night at your local high school and hear exactly what you would on the CD from all of the other naive boy groups. Although their sound is as cliché as the “The” in front of their name and the “s” at the end, The Lashes have several potential songs that could one day be considered VH1 material (or background music on Next). Upcoming singles to look for are “Please, Please, Please,” “Dear Hollywood,” and the very Killers-ish sounding “Yesterday Feels like A Year.” But let’s face it, listening to some of the other songs on this album is just like being on the business end of a cat-o-nine-tails lashing. Yeah, I went there.

Similar Albums:
The Killers – Hot Fuss
Interpol – Turn on the Bright Lights
Rooney – Rooney