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Only On Weekends

Only On Weekends

Written by: TL on 13/11/2011 17:25:01

Next in my queue of reviews is Only On Weekends, a quartet from New Jersey who, unbelievably, have been a band playing shows since 2002, yet have only gotten around to releasing their debut album in July this year. So then you should be expecting a record all ripe with maturity, which sounds like anything but a debut effort.. Right? Well, wrong. Said debut record, also titled "Only On Weekends", sounds like rough, low-fi emo/pop-punk in the vein of The Get Up Kids and Motion City Soundtrack. You've got your super nasal singer, your bright, simplistic chord structures and bubbly keys, ultimately adding up into either up-beat, chorus-oriented poppy tracks, or more introverted, super-emo, Mineral-ish songs.

The end result, in both cases, has a certain throwback charm, but can hardly be called original. The first half of the record mainly offers the more cheerful kind of tracks, a good example of which is "I Can Go Bump In The Night", which is fairly catchy, but then there's also "More Than Friends / Less Than Likely" which sounds soooo much like Blink 182 that it's hard to think OOW didn't intentionally steal the song's melodies from them. Meanwhile, songs like "Through The Looking Glass" and "A Past You Cannot Change" provide late-album examples of the band's more thoughtful side, sounding a bit like Mineral and Jimmy Eat World. Initially this sounds cool, but the songs don't seem to develop enough down the stretch, and eventually might seem a little samey, with the sharp voiced singing possibly even getting a bit annoying.

As you may have deduced by now, I'm not exactly overwhelmingly impressed by "Only On Weekends". In its defense, it's a very grounded, light-hearted and easily enjoyable interpretation of early noughties emo-rock. It just doesn't really do anything new with the style to make it seem like OOW as a band are ones who have any sort of agenda for the music scene of today. Of course there's nothing wrong with touring the local circuit, sharing the appreciation for this era of emo with whatever fans are in the area, but if OOW have hopes to some day do more than that, I think they need to step up their level of ambition, and find a way to sound more revelant in 2012.

Download: I Can Go Bump In The Night, I Know
For The Fans Of: old The Get Up Kids, old Motion City Soundtrack, old Jimmy Eat World, old New Found Glory
Listen: facebook.com/OnlyOnWeekends.band

Release Date 30.07.2011
Flying Squirrel Records