The Broadways' Broken Star is easily my favorite album of all time, and hasn't budged from that position since my friend introduced me to it back in 2005. Released in 1998, Brendan Kelly (previously of Slapstick), Chris McCaughan (previously of Tricky Dick), Rob DePaolo, and Dan Hanaway (also of Slapstick, but only on trumpet & vocals) created what stands for me as the high water mark of 90's pop punk, then dissolved pretty much immediately after.
I don't think I ever wrote about it in depth on any of my previous blogs, but only for the fact that reducing my relation to this band to a single post is an enormously daunting task. At this point, every song they ever wrote has been scorched into my psyche permanently, and despite that, I still feel an emotional need to give their discography a spin every couple months. To put that in perspective, oodles of bands I fucking obsessed over throughout my late teens have become like dulled swords to me at this point - still anchored to me by respect and sentiment, but very low on emotional usefulness and thus, not in regular rotation - but not The Broadways. I couldn't even tell you the last time I spun Indian Summer's discography or Defiance, Ohio's Share What Ya Got on my own whim, and I fucking hinged on that shit back in the day.
Somehow Broken Star and the swag of EPs collected (incompletely) on the Broken Van compilation still sound fresh to me as the day I first heard them, and I feel legitimately sorrowful that I missed their reunion last year at the Asian Man Records anniversary show. There's just something about the band's approach that I never tire of, and while I've grown to find some of the lyrics to be somewhat overstated, the conviction gets me every time. I've never felt any need for tattoos, but I still swear I'll get a tribute to them on me someday in the distant, rash decision-making future. Likely the namesake of my previous blog, in fact. Alcohol mandatory.
Shortly after, I arrived here:
I feel like all of that might create a frame of reference and qualify this largely disagreeable opinion:
The Lawrence Arms might be the most mystifyingly lame and disappointing bands I can think of in the entire pop-punk spectrum.
Lemme first say that I've been listening to this band above on and (mostly) off for years. During the earliest stages, I was utterly convinced that the folly was on my part when I didn't orgasm violently over Chris McCaughan and Brendan Kelly's current project. After all, how could two of the four members of a band that blew my skull open like a pipe-bomb-hidden-in-a-birthday-cake let me down so hard? Clearly, I was just setting the bar too high and/or treating them unfairly as an extension of their previous unit - one whose sentimental attachment and affection for could do nothing but hamper my judgment.
Still, I sauntered on, and eventually made my way to their 3rd and 4th LPs, Apathy And Exhaustion and The Greatest Story Ever Told, respectively. While the band certainly adapted a more discernible style here, they amazingly sounded even more pathetically limited and riff-less, this time glazed grotesquely with cheesy, sterile production and a shitload of wimpy, auto-tuned McCaughan ballads. On top of that, TGSET's namesake is one of my favorite books, so it was pretty disheartening to hear it's inspiration ringing through that limp stool of an album. Regardless, my wishy-washy nature kept these 4 discs spinning a few times a year, hoping one day I'd "get it" and be able to jack off to this shit like everyone else.
Finally, just a few days ago, I made a realization after not touching a single Lawrence Arms track for over a year: I wasn't off the mark at all in treating the band's first two LPs as extensions of The Broadways - their approach was almost exactly the same. It wasn't the familiarity, though, that did these guys in for me, nor the sentiment - it was the fact that the material was soggy and weak. Why?
Probably because Dan Hanaway made The Broadways as great as they were.
I had somehow overlooked this glaringly obvious connection for years, likely in lieu of not quite digging Hanaway's Honor System project (and thus, having not heard it since 2006). Upon hearing Tricky Dick's discography a few weeks ago - of whom Hanaway guitar'd for - it finally made sense. While the point is only really applicable to the first 7 or 8 songs compiled (their final recordings, I think), the guitarwork is fucking fantastic, and while it doesn't exactly clear boundaries in pop-punk, it textures the songs perfectly and delivers killer hooks with a tons of proto-Broadways lingo. This isn't to say that if he had joined in on the trio (or even took McCaughan's place) they would've necessarily been as amazing as the preceding unit, but it definitely makes me wonder. It suddenly doesn't feel like such a shock that The Lawrence Arms
didn't deliver the goods...
In Conclusion:
A Guided Tour Of Chicago and Ghost Stories sound like well-meaning, but unsatisfying outtakes of Brendan and Chris' previous band. Every time I wind up listening to them I find myself altering that line in Wayne's World and looping it compulsively:
"The Shitty Broadways? Are they any good?" "They suck."
That's actually less of a joke than it sounds. I tend to get plagued with thought loops. As for Apathy And Exhaustion and The Greatest Story Ever Told, it sounds like they finally got comfortable moving away from the sub-Broadways-isms of the past and saw the ticket to the kingdom in the form of a bunch of damp, sound-alike ballads and blinding high-res production.
In Conclusion Pt 2:
I realize this post is pretty harsh and that my opinion means zip to anyone. Fortunately, I still like writing and voicing my opinion.
In Conclusion Pt. 3:
This song was the first piece of traveler-lifestyle ephemera that sparked my forays into the minimalist and risky. It's also one of my favorite songs ever:
