Alright, I'm just going to come out and say it. I've been battling an evil demon inside myself that's been eating its way through my soul ever since I heard that Lifetime was going to put out an album on Peter Wentz's Decaydance Records. I've lost sleep. I get a nasty case of heartburn every time I think about this moral quandary I've been tackling. So instead of fighting it, I've decided to succumb to my amoral thoughts and let it rest. I'm sorry all you floppy haired girl jean wearing youth medium t-shirt sporting gloomy bastards, I don't want you listening to Lifetime. I indisputably don't want you liking Lifetime. I don't want you to see you up front at their shows. I don't want to see their Myspace profile in your Top 8. I don't want to see Lifetime's lyrics scrawled all over Live Journals.
Lifetime is a band for us 22-37 year olds who most likely slave away at some shit job five days a week behind a desk where we are some faceless drone making other people richer. We cover our tattoos and watch our mouths. We shine our shoes, put up our hair, and press our slacks. We probably have long time girlfriends or boyfriends; hell some of us might already be married. Our hair is thinning; the lines on our faces grow deeper every year. We worry about making rent, making babies, car payments, and house mortgages.
Why does Lifetime mean so much to the older hardcore generation? Why have we put these five guys from New Brunswick on such a high pedestal? What it is it that makes Lifetime so important to our very lives? It's simple actually; Lifetime is a band that just writes magnificent songs. They know when to go fast, they know exactly when to toss the perfect hook to make the most memorable of memorable choruses. They are heavy enough to make you want to stomp around your room but melodic enough to make you smile at the same time. And they wrote songs about girls. Who couldn't get into that?
I know I make it sound like Lifetime should be able to cross generations with their own timeless catchy melodic hardcore and they probably already have made strides to bridge that gap. However, I don't want it to happen. I just don't think you kids will get it. Or I just don't want you to get it. I'm being selfish and I don't care. Lifetime is my band. Lifetime is the band that changed everything for me. I'm sorry if I don't feel like sharing them with a bunch of kids that hop trends faster than they can put up 300 photos of themselves looking forlorn and pathetic.
I guess I can't fight it anymore. You kids can get the new Lifetime album at any Best Buy. You can hear everything on this self-titled album that makes Lifetime so great. It's all there for you; the hooks, songs about girls, the breakneck fast parts, and the huge choruses that will get stuck in your heads for weeks on end. It's all right there; eleven tracks of melodic hardcore superiority that has been duplicated so many times throughout the years but no one ever came close to mastering. Damnit, kids, this is Lifetime. Don't take them for granted. Listen to them with your heart. If you are going to listen to Lifetime, please do me a favor and at least try to understand why they mean so much to so many of us.
On the song "Can't Think About it Now," Lifetime vocalist Ari Katz notes in passing that "nobody knows if the kids gonna like it." No kidding. As anyone talking about this record will likely point out, expectations ride high. After eight years away from the fray, Lifetime returned in 2005 for a scattered series of shows before reuniting for real and recording this, a self-titled full-length - previewed by a two-song single, with both tunes reappearing here.
But let's reassure the doubtful: this record sounds like nobody but Lifetime, and the band returns as if they'd just gone out for beer and cigarettes. You'll feel instantly at home: Steve Evetts' familiar, thunderous production makes Pete Martin and Dan Yemin's sturdy, anthemic guitar riffs sound as thick and comforting as a chocolate milkshake. Katz's vocals sound a bit less ragged around the edges, but he still strains and emotes like nobody else, singing like a grown-up boy with no time for bullshit and all the time in the world for romance.
The strength of the songs shapes the familiar sound of the record into something virtuous. Long after bands like Saves the Day have abandoned the band's blueprint, Lifetime continue to find previously unheard nuances in their sound. And more so than on their landmark full-lengths Hello Bastards and Jersey's Best Dancers, these tunes demand a few listens before fully revealing themselves. "Monday Morning Airport" evokes "Cut the Tension" as Katz tattoos a potent staccato hook over the chorus; "Haircuts and T-Shirts" charges past you, sounding maybe the most like vintage Lifetime; "Try and Stay Awake" sports a classically caustic Lifetime chorus, in the vein of "(The Gym is) Neutral Territory." And the awesome closer "Record at Night" gift-wraps its pure pathos, with sing-along hooks clothing one of Lifetime's most wonderfully sad songs yet.
I struggle to find quibbles. Lifetime arrives perfectly forged, with no lagging moments - it actually sounds more breathless and exhilarated than either of the band's canonical LPs, balancing the teflon-coated cohesion of Jersey's Best Dancers and the messier emotional gravity of Hello Bastards. I could actually use more double-tracked vocals-the dual Aris that crop up occasionally really drive home some of the hooks, like on the chorus and end of "Northbound Breakdown," the afore-mentioned "Try and Stay Awake," and the minor-key middle of the gorgeous "All Night Long" (not to mention Yemin's barked "go!" on the latter, or the chipper-yet-mournful backing vocals on "Records at Night"). But Lifetime display an archly tasteful sense of song with tunes that don't numbly recite their melodies, but instead blaze through them and allow the hooks to gradually stick to your consciousness over repeated listens.
And listen again you will: this album is like candy-coated heroin. Lifetime impresses the first time, but astonishes the more you spin it. It humbly and expertly blows you away, completely defying accepted wisdom about reunions by delivering a work that can stand proudly with the classics that preceded it, like a plucky, precocious younger brother with nothing left to prove. Not one of the album's songs linger for more than three minutes, and you could criticize its short length - until you realize that most bands struggle to attain a tenth of this quality for half the time.
I had only hoped that this album wouldn't tarnish Lifetime's legacy; instead it further cements their incomparable status, like adding an extra eleven stories to an already towering skyscraper. The band's influence, already incalculable, should now become almost unimaginable as the ten years between Jersey's Best Dancers and this album prove inconsequential. "All Night Long" skewers "punk rock millionaires," some of whom probably rode Lifetime's aesthetic into their designer homes and coke habits - but Lifetime's eleven speedy anthems call the bluffs of every last imitator they've spawned, and I'm doubtful that the new jacks will be able to keep up. Like Ari sings in "Northbound Breakdown": "I hope you're in your car right now / Turning this shit up so loud."
