2008 Woodie Awards
Drowning in the shallow end
The Used's b-sides E.P. fails to capture the band at their best
Michael DiGrande
Issue date: 2/26/08 Section: Arts and Entertainment
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And when this happens, their career can take many roads. They can continue to push their sound forward with the same passion that marked their early releases, or they can change their approach to where everything is calculated and constructed in their music.
When this happens, it's usually the band's own indulgences in the studio that decreases the quality of their work.
For The Used, their new digital E.P. "Shallow Believer" is the perfect illustration of how a band transitions from earnest, passionate song writing, to overworking and overloading their music.
The 10 track E.P. is a collection of b-sides and rarities that spans the group's three studio albums; showing fans that The Used's drastic change in sound has served them as "hit or miss" at best.
"Dark Days" begins the collection and right off the bat you can tell that the band is sloppily aiming for a dense sound. Quinn Allman's dry acoustic guitar is layered with ethereal sounds, synthetic drums, and faint murmurings from front man Bert McCracken.
It's ambient for the sake of ambient, because after 20 seconds McCracken lets loose a throaty shriek that welcomes chugging guitars and a pulsing mid-section.
The song continues in typical fashion with McCracken's half-spoken verses and large swelling choruses carrying the melody, but the ending is where it gets ridiculous. For the last minute, the instruments cut out leaving only McCracken's forced falsetto and a lone piano to close out the number.
Since when did The Used start channeling Elton John?
This exemplifies what's wrong with "Shallow Believer" and the way that the band approaches song craft these days. There is simply too much going on in these tracks.
It's as if they took bits and pieces of unrelated sounds and strung them together as well as adding extra instrumentation that overburdens the material. Rather than consolidating and scaling back the arrangements, the band overworks the material and destroys the spontaneity of the songs.