When middle-school seemed too far away and Goosebumps represented literature, birthday parties were the fucking shit. I'd eat cake, party hard and take the occasional peak up a dress. Okay, 33% of that was a lie. The only negative aspect was having to get a birthday present for the little sucker. But, by the end of the night I would receive a bag of party favors. What a disappointment it was every time though. Plastic throw away toys and candy that sucked. The Distance's If You Lived Here You'd be Home Already is essentially a compact-disc formatted party favor: thirteen songs taken from six recordings. Now that The Distance is on Abacus Recordings, this album can be the ultimate party mix for those who missed the previous parties of out of print recordings.
Within these thirteen songs we get a variety of treats and sinkers. With their melodic hardcore brand, The Distance lets us in on covers of Minor Threat's "Filler" and Dramarama's "Anything Anything." While the Minor Threat cover is pretty straight on, the Dramarama cover is gag worthy. The guitar riff that strikes at 0:26 is like ringworm. Yeah, it's really cool at first, but once the puss begins oozing, you'll regret it. A combination of whiny lyrics and emotive whines ("Marry meeee") doesn't help either.
The Distance's original songs are snatched from a three-way split 7' with Outbreak and Some Kind of Hate, live songs from CBGB's, releases on Good News Records and Old Guard / Takeover Records, and two new samplers. It's like a discography-lite. The older songs walk down a darker avenue while the two new songs shuffle their feet and skip with a more upbeat Stretch Arm Strong style loaded with melodic screams and pop punk singing backups. Unless you're an enormous fan of The Distance the live songs come off like poorly recorded songs more than anything else.
Maybe it's because The Distance isn't my favorite band, but If You Lived Here You'd Be Home Already sounds more mediocre than anything else. Maybe if I hadn't heard much hardcore before this it could be some kind of gateway into the dark nether realm of punk rock. Maybe if party favors were filled with nothing but Grade-A caramel and Spawn toys I'd go to more birthday parties.
