The term "pop-punk" has been really batted around in 2007. It has been used describe every band from Set Your Goals (wrong) to The Ergs (right) and now we have Broadway Calls, an Oregon outfit who straddles the line of pop-punk but strays closer to the power pop side of the equation. When I listen to their self-titled album for State of Mind, I think more Cheap Trick mixed with Green Day's Kerplunk! than I do Screeching Weasel or The Queers.
Broadway Calls produce fourteen tracks of poppy almost radio friendly tracks chock full of memorable choruses and huge dancey buildups that can could cause even the most jaded of hardcore fans (moi? yeah) to smile. I can't but bounce around on my bed in my lonely bedroom on this cold frigid Friday Night in Minnesota. Broadway Calls does everything in their four-chord power to make sure you are humming their songs for days on end.
Fourteen songs of power-pop is a bit much for me to stomach though. It's like ingesting too much of your favorite ice cream while chasing it down with too-sugary Kool-Aid. It gets so sickly sweet by track six or seven that your stomach tells your body that it wants to lay down into a saccharine overload coma and dream of cute girls and missing home.
Broadway Calls would satisfy any fan that remembers when Green Day toured basements and high school auditoriums rather than stadiums and sang songs about the government. If anything, Broadway Calls' self-titled album would cause doubts in anyone's mind of what pop-punk should be. I'll tell you one thing; Broadway Calls is more of a pop-punk band that New Found Glory on their poppy best. There are more hooks than a tacklebox on this album than there are token cute mosh parts and horrible Minor Threat covers.
I can't help to think that Broadway Calls is the project of some hardcore bands that wanted to play some power-pop for the kids while opening for Killing the Dream or Ruiner. It's cute and everything, but it's been done before. It does come off as cheesy more so than it does playful. I could be wrong; maybe Broadway Calls owns tapes by The Magnolias or even the first album by The Goo Goo Dolls. Whatever may be the case, Broadway Calls are a fun listen no matter what you want to call it or whatever scene you want to lump it into.
