Release Date: February 25, 2003
Reviewed by Vin Cherubino
Pop punk is in its prime. With bands like Sum 41, Blink 182, SR-71, dominating the airwaves, it’s a perfect time to release a pop punk album. American Hi-Fi realizing this has just released the follow up to their 2001 self titled debut. Does the album compete against other artists in the genre, or is it overshadowed by the hordes of others who sound the same?
The answer is a mix of both. The Art of Losing is an entertaining punk CD, comprised mostly of average riffs and lyrics. “This is the Sound” shows how enjoyable slower songs by pop punk artists can be, this one sounding mostly like SR-71’s masterpiece “The Best is Yet to Come”. “Save Me” successfully blends some nice acoustical pieces followed by an adequately motivated chorus that later on becomes much heavier. These two songs completely outshine the rest of the CD. The rest of the songs on the CD are very standard cookie-cutter pop punk material, never breaking the mold set by many other artists. One of the nicer surprises was the Local H type riff used during the last song “Happy”, but then again it becomes nothing more then a borrowed sound from another artist, which the CD seems to be full of.
Fans of this pop punk genre will enjoy the CD, but will quickly get tired of it, the same consequence suffered by other CDs that never try to stretch the boundaries set by other artists in the genre. After you’ve heard it once, you feel like you’ve heard it a thousand times. Pop Punk is in its prime now, but will it stand the test of time?
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