Avoid One Thing

(Side One Dummy)
by Morgan Coe

In spite of their barbed wire logo and spooky, Pinhead Gunpowder-ish cover art, Avoid One Thing is not a punk band. Although they occasionally try to mix things up by going all quiet and acoustic, they generally gravitate to a kind of “grown up Blink 182” sound: Slow-to-brisk tempos, simple guitars and hooks, and unchallenging lyrics. “Bomb-Building Songs” is exactly what you aren’t going to hear from Avoid One Thing. In fact, this record sounds like a new rock band’s first album, which is strange considering how many Boston-area scene “veterans” (Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Raging Teens, Spring Heel Jack, and Pilfers, just off the top of my head) they’ve stacked the line-up with.

At times their singing is a little heavy on the Bosstone-isms, which isn’t surprising since Mighty Mighty bass player Joe Gittleman seems to be the head guy in charge here, but otherwise there isn’t much to distinguish the band except for the vague cockiness that comes from writing about yourself in the third person in songs like “Backyard Joey” and lines like “laugh clown laugh look at Joey.”

In the spirit of the band’s name, however, I’m going to offer my own suggestion for One Thing that bands should Avoid: Writing songs about how hard it is to be a big-time musician (“Saturday means nothing if you don’t work during the week”) is obnoxious, plain and simple, but doing it in an unimpressive side project like this one is just puzzling.
(6201 Sunset Blvd. Suite 211 Hollywood, CA 90028)