Review Summary: This definitely isn't the worst album I've ever heard but it's really only okay; not as good as everyone makes it out to be.
Before I start this review, I have to be completely honest with you guys: I don't like Hurley. It gets on my nerves with it's loud repetitive choruses annoyingly tuneless vocals, and showoff production and album cover. So imagine my surprise when I listen to this record an...hey actually enjoy it a little bit. Having that said I really don't think that its all cracked up to be, and it certainly has a number of flaws which I will now go over. The first flaw is the concept. The concept is too simple, its just a silly album, that's been done so many times before its not even funny. Rivers Cuomo is a pretty good writer but this concept fails him just a little bit.
Secondly and this is where the big flaws come in is Rivers's vocals. They're awful! Awful, awful, awful. The whole album he sounds like a frightened donkey singing for his life. Which is a shame because his lyrics are really funny. But you have to follow along and read them because they're is no way in hell you'll pay attention to them just by listening along. They're not even remotely memorable, and for me that drags the album down a lot because its supremely distracting. Now he does occasionally use rougher vocals and that is a very good thing. Too bad they aren't that solid either, his regular voice has a bad range and is even less tuneful than his shout.
There are a couple highlights though. Time Flies and Unbroken are both ok because they're pretty slow and soft in comparison to the rest of the album and the Time Flies song is the closer. It's a pretty good closer even though it runs waaay too long, they could have just cut it in have and it would have been very good instead of pretty good. Overall if you took out all the pointless and irritating vocals then this would be a great album. But with all the lyric looking up and headaches I had to endure, it stands as it's only ok. Not a great comeback but it's alright.
