This debut release from Hastings quartet Sell By Date starts off innocently enough. ‘”It’s Not About Sex” is pretty much your run-of-the-mill pop-rock track, not too heavy in its guitars, not too sickly sweet in terms of pop. That is until a moment that sounds suspiciously like an attempted hardcore/screamo shriek. Here lies the first hint that something may be awry.
Track two, “The Wrong Song” is passable, not too varied from the opener, but does feel overly long, tending to plod along a bit. “A Gravel Track to My Dying Valentine” (contender for worst song title ever) however is where it all goes wrong. From it’s suspiciously Korn sounding opening guitar the track veers off into full-on pop-punk influenced territory (not a bad thing in itself). It’s a hybrid of Busted and Mike TV (again, nothing particularly wrong there). But, again, there seems to be an inexplicable screamo undertone, completely unnecessary and out of place. This track is a really poor man’s Finch, if you will.
But even that is a diamond in the rough compared to the absolute travesty that is “I Wanna Fuck Your Mum” (guess what this one’s about). The reason Blink 182 can get away with the potty-mouth, toilet humour is because it’s always kept short and simple. At 3:45 this song is so overlong, so tedious that it makes everything else on this record seem, well, manageable. To top this, on a record that’s lyrically weak at the best of times, this is an absolute monstrosity (“I’m gonna smack her / Like a badger / In a bathtub / Full of water”; seriously?). This really is the musical equivalent of a tumbleweed. Again, the likes of the Blink boys and Sum 41 can pass of comedy punk because they portray themselves as roguishly lovable. Sell By Date simply sound like a bunch of high schoolers trying miserably to be funny. There’s nothing roguishly lovable here.
Following this, closer “Today Tomorrow Forever” was never going to be as bad, but it’s probably actually the strongest track on the release. The problem is the acoustic gentleness and the New Found Glory-ish vocals just mean nothing thanks to the stink before. Overall, this is a muddled mix of styles that, although permeating influences galore, needs tightening up. Sell By Date needs to decide which direction to take. It wouldn’t hurt writing some semi decent lyrics either. Not funny, at all.
Alex