Over the past 2 years, the exclamation point has become more played out than "Hey Ya!" has over these past couple months. The exclamation point is used to show urgency, uprising, excitement. Volcano, I'm Still Excited!!, like Stop It!! the previous year, manage to avoid all three of those in their debut record.
What you'll get with this record is laid back tunes with a casio keyboard leading the band. While this is fine and all, these songs go absolutely nowhere. You can't dance to them. You can't do much with them except play hackey-sack and maybe drive around on a summer's day and feel like you are on The O.C.
"2nd Gun" is the first real song on the record and definitely has radio single potential. It's an uptempo number(for them at least) that just screams Summer '04. "Trunk of My Car" follows this diddy up with a rather annoying singing duet with minimal instrumentation. "Joe Jaxon" is a pretty boring number as well, but the best on this record. The keyboard is hardly there and guitar and drums play the forefront to HIS NAME HERE'S melancholy vocals. The chorus kills me though as that damn baseball organ pops back up, ruining everything that was previously established.
They go back and forth with some poppy songs and some melancholy songs, but never claim to be worthy of the dual-attack of exclamations that dress the end of their name.
This could be picked up by a major no questions about it. I couldn't imagine their live show being much better as you can't get down to these songs, like they want you to. Unless of course, they were possibly playing your prom.
