Guilty Of Being Whine

Good Charlotte!

I put "I Just Wanna Live" on the Stypod (before I knew it was going to be a single!) so I'm not going to submit anything from The Chronicles Of Life & Death for exposure at the Tofu Hut. Plus I can't decide which track is most worth sharing. While I still think the album is a disappointment, I listen to certain songs from it with surprising frequency. I understand why Christgau considers it a total turkey (I'm glad he acknowledges the "good intentions"), but he never had much time for Morrissey or the Cure either. Those artists are responsible for 1/25th of my 100 Favorite Albums list so I'm a little more sympathetic to their disciples. A lot of you dig the insufferable childlike sadsack shitsingers that have inspired GC's latest material too and should realize how much this stuff has in common. So what follows are descriptions of some key not-yet-singles. If any of them pique your curiosity and you can't hunt them down on some p2p program, e-mail me the name of the track you most want to hear and I'll g-mail it to you. Two tracks if you ask nicely. I'm curious what people think about these songs, so review them in the comments box. Be as brutal or kind as you desire.

"S.O.S." - while I was originally annoyed that they recorded their "kill myself" song after their "don't kill yourself" song, I'm now simply impressed by how much this song sounds like what the Morrissey/Jerry Finn collabo should have sounded like. Joel's clearly aping the Mozz's moa-oo-woans about being alo-oo-wone and the blitzkrieg bop's climactic bridge is as musically affecting as anything that sounds like Blink-182 could be. If you can handle nasal and love "The Boy Racer," this track is recommended.

"Ghost Of You" - I sometimes wonder if this is a Limahl cover.

"The Truth" - this is actually the most obvious failure on the album, but a fascinating one: Joel bawling and shrieking for a girl to give him the truth over and over and over and over over a slow piano line. I'm no Plastic Ono Band enthusiast, but if you can still doubt that he's "for real" after this, you've got a heart of stone.

"The World Is Black" - This one's for the Cure fans, the Cure fans of the world. It's like something from Disintegration played at 45rpm.

"Mountain" - While I'm annoyed that Good Charlotte is going all emo, they can do powerwimp better than most. Joel's an overearnest doofus, but he is blessedly free of passive-aggressive macho yeargh: "I wasn't on a mountain/ When it came to me/ All my life’s been wasted/ Chasing shallow dreams...And all these things/ What I've gained/ And what I've seen/ It can’t compare/ To the love that you could give to me." In their Threat cover story the guy says that he's realized that to get through life you should care about everyone as if they were your own children: "If Bush loved the children of Iraq as much as he loved his daughters, he wouldn't have sent our soldiers over there." OOH DON'T YOU HATE HIS FASHION SENSE SO MUCH? THIS IS JUST JUVENILE WHINING! NOT LIKE MY PRECIOUS '80S EEYORES!

I'll do my best not to post about these guys again. At least until they make a new video.

Good Charlotte!