Broadway Calls – “Self Titled”
Broadway Calls – “Self Titled” isn’t quite the best next step for Broadway Calls. While it keeps the “Call the Medic” black, blue and cracked melodic punk sense. They’re much less accessible with its measured aggression, rich vocals, and auto-tune production. Much Like Alkaline Trio, Broadway Calls has grown away from they’re punk-pop roots into more of an Indie/Alternative rock Warped Tour caliber band. On 2006's “Call The Medic”, the guys of Broadway Calls let out rowdy "whoa-ohs" and told a whole town of scenesters to fuck off with "Fuck You Seattle!" and the gritty acoustic ballad “Save Our Ship” belted out raspy melodic sing-a-long quality imperfection. But then Adeline Records got a hold of them and well, took all the punk out of their sound and created a third generation Greenday rip off and it isn’t pretty. This self-titled album has a similar sense of emotional brokenness as their prior album, but things never materialize and never make you feel the punk emotion. It’s almost as if their going through the motions to let the auto-tune producers add electronic energy to the songs. Unfortunately, what those producers did was add a heavy glob of emo eyeliner and scenester girlpants. Over all the album's pop sense glimmers so heavily that it stamps out any sense of a punk influence at As good as Broadway Calls are at relating their life experiences to listeners, it gets tedious as hell and makes you skip tracks to find something resembling their former grittier former selves. Let's see they once wrote smart, bright, punk-derived pop, but they now seem to have decided on black, white and blah Depeche Mode inspired bordom. So while this album is a complete stinker, when Broadway Calls is on, god damn are the songs good. It’s just unfortunate that this album seems to be created from cutting room floor songs, especially the bloody awful new version of “Save Our Ship”. If you want to check out Broadways Calls I highly recommend skipping this release and getting something with personality. 3/5
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