71 - Tomorrow

by: jonathan baran

Attention rock fans: SR-71 is now hardcore. Don’t believe me? Check out the Motorhead shirt lead singer Mitch Allan now sports. It seems like just yesterday the boys were singing shallow punk-pop about being kicked while high. Gone are the days of such fluff, and in its place we get such deep, introspective, and hardcore lyrics as “I drowned my girlfriend in her wishing well/I’m not afraid of afterlife hell/Cause I live it everday” from the song “Lucky”. In even more girlfriend killing fun, the song “She was dead” contains such sweet lines as “Everday I’m gonna make her cry/Till the minute that we say goodbye/I’m gonna make her wish…She was dead!” Look out Eminem; there are new bad boys on the block.

In today’s pop music environment the most mainstream and popular rock acts seem to be the pseudo-heavy acts, with the likes of Nickleback, Default, and Lifehouse leading the recycled rock way. It would be cynical to think that SR-71’s abrupt sound change had anything to do with the success of these bands (read: album sales and money); it would be cynical and probably correct.

It is, however, probably a tad bit unfair to pin all the troubles of our current pop music on one bad album. Yes, Tomorrow is a pretty awful album, but there have been plenty of awful albums this year that provided a steady stream of radio hits. Who would really blame them for striking it rich while the “return of the rock” mantra is still in full effect? This album is, after all, a Kiss FM, TRL-ready production, and in that vein they succeed quite nicely in balancing the right amount of power chords with the right amount of heartfelt lyrics that is sure to be a delight with the MTV crowd.

Who knows, maybe the SR-71 boys can show all those teeny boppers that think Lifehouse is hardcore what rocking is really all about. So to all of those out there that answered Chad Kroeger when he asked us all “Are you having fun yet?”, this album is for you. For everyone else out there already bored with the same tired “hard” rock formula: stay away. 11-Jan-2003 5:44 PM