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Leaving Springfield - Tragic as We Speed Away
Thursday, May 21, 2009 | midnight
Springfield is the home of Abraham Lincoln (Illinois), the Basketball Hall of Fame (Massachusetts) and the Simpsons. Yet apparently, it’s also a place where grown men—Brent Kessler and Matt Norcross, in this case—make whiny punk-pop for the teenage masses.
More nasal than Simple Plan, less funny than Bowling for Soup, Leaving Springfield is generic by pop-punk standards, which makes it painful by traditional standards. For every moment on the band’s second LP that shows promise (the Buzzcock-ian opening of “Hey Hey Linda,” the refreshing synths of “Lost”), there are at least four that feel, well, empty. Springfield’s attempts at capturing adolescent expressions of emotion are the most problematic. Both “Nothin’s good if nothin’ is bad” and “Why can’t you go away?/And just stay away?” are actual lyrics from actual songs, proving that nobody outside of middle school—with the exception of Weird Al, maybe—should really be doing this.
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