Build & Burn begins with what ostensibly sounds like an unsure Loved Ones. The first three tracks are throwbacks of three very different styles of punk rock. The first song "Pretty Good Year," a b-side from Keep Your Heart, finds the band treading ground already heard on previous releases, adding more of a pop element to the more rock than punk sound made famous by Social Distortion. Though this is why listeners fell in love with them, nobody wants to hear Keep Your Heart again.
"The Inquirer" sounds familiar, but on the first listen I can't place it. I've heard these riffs before, but where? Impossible to pigeonhole it to a particular band, the song sounds as if The Loved Ones combed through the back catalogues of Asian Man and Kung-Fu Records. For anyone whose introduction to punk came during the latter half of the 90's, this will bring back fond memories of fawning over girls and never wanting to grow up. It's a California sound with more melody and bounce than anything released by Fat and Epitaph at the time.
The third track, "The Bridge," follows suit but with more emphasis on the jumpy power chords accompanied by single note melody lines, similar to the early work of more popular groups like Good Charlotte, Mest, and New Found Glory.
This is where Build & Burn becomes confusing, arising a number of questions. Are The Loved Ones looking to appeal to wider audience? Where is the influence from former Explosion members? Aren't there supposed to be nods to, as well as guest appearances from, the rehashed Springsteens in The Hold Steady? Is this lifting of riffs a bad thing?
While it's easy to say the band is uncertain of their sound, the reality is just the opposite. Here are a group of gentlemen capable of writing a great song without behind confined to genres. The second half of the album finds vocalist/guitarist Dave Hause and company leaning more towards the American rock n' roll styling popularized in the mid-seventies. While these songs are mid-tempo rock n' roll with touches of blues and country, their similarity lies also in the lyrical content. American rockers Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen came from a time when Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath paraded around in stage costumes behind a plethora of stage props. Quite the opposite of this hyperbolized rock n' roll lifestyle, Petty and Springsteen played in blue jeans to fans in similar attire, singing songs about dealing with heartache and trying to rise above the working class world. The Loved Ones do the same with an extended motif of building and burning. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to get to a point of comfort, and some times it takes a lot of faith as Hause sings on "Louisiana".
And you can leave them there, you can walk away / You can point your guns, and hope they'll stay / But they will fold their hands, and start to pray / A little faith can heal heart that's been betrayed
And when it's all been built up, when you feel comfortable while frail, it can all be ruined in just a moment. Hause says this simply on "Brittle Heart," "Oh... you build me up inside your brittle heart/ And I just burn down everything."
While listeners may be surprised on first listen, this collection of songs is both natural and fitting. Build & Burn is as much a punk album as it is a no frills rock n' roll album. It's a celebration of the themes common in these genres: romance, rebellion, and rigor.
The Loved Ones entered my radar with their first EP for Jade Tree, which converted me with "100K," a staccato blast that sounded like Hot Water Music after a handful of amphetamines. Any doubts I may have had vanished with the release of 2006's Keep Your Heart, an unassuming bucket of anthems that sounds almost like Shock Troops updated for the aughties.
But a personnel shakeup in that same year left the band scrambling for replacements, and they ultimately recovered by adding two ex-members of The Explosion, who happen to be one of my all-time favorite bands. As if that wasn't enough, they opted to have their sophomore LP Build & Burn produced by Bryan Kienlen and Pete Steinkopf, who together provide the ten-string backbone of the Bouncing Souls - another of my favorite bands, and one aging about as gracefully as a punk band could ever hope to.
So the album comes equipped with a formidable pedigree, and has all the ingredients necessary for a great record. Does it live up to its promise?
Sure does. Build & Burn is undoubtedly a great record, but I have to admit that, at first, it sounded flatter and less inspired than Keep Your Heart. For me, the initial difference felt similar to that between None More Black's first album File Under Black and the follow-up This is Satire. The latter record strikes a more ambitious and nuanced posture, but it also strays somewhat from the first album's immediacy, even while standing on its own merits. Some of you might disagree with my assessment here.
Reviewing new records can be hard, because you've got to hammer your thoughts into shape before the record starts getting old, and sometimes it takes a number of listens for an album to get its hooks in you. It took Build & Burn about five to work its mojo on me, but then all of a sudden the songs I'd felt less than enamored with at first just clicked, the way you recognize an old friend who's really grown into himself. The first side in particular is just packed, as the sinuous, worn-in melodies of "The Inquirer," "The Bridge," and "Sarah's Game" bombard the listener like an artillery barrage, just the way that Keep Your Heart did.
The Loved Ones have managed to garner more than a few Bruce Springsteen comparisons, often seemingly based on little more than Dave Hause's mention of The Boss in the Kid Dynamite documentary Four Years in One Gulp. But on Build & Burn they start to stick, as several of Hause's lyrics resolve into loose character sketches that feel like they could've been culled from Born to Run or Darkness on the Edge of Town, and the occasional flourishes of piano and organ don't hurt either. But sonically, The Loved Ones still have more in common with Avail (think "Lombardy St.") or Hot Water Music (think "Rooftops") than The Boss - and fortunately they avoid descending into cheeseball rock and roll nostalgia (although "Louisiana" threatens).
Much like American Steel's comeback album Destroy Their Future or Modern Life is War's Midnight in America, Build & Burn suffers from pre-release excitement and the unavoidable comparisons to earlier material, inevitable as funerals and tax returns. But while neither of those albums managed to top their predecessors, Build & Burn might actually be even better than Keep Your Heart. I'm not sure yet, but it's the kind of album where once it snapped into focus I couldn't stop listening to it, and I like it more with every spin.
