“Things get better with age.” Applied to a plethora of things, this popularized statement has been used to describe cheese, fine wines and women trying to make themselves feel better about the aging process. This statement cannot, however, be applied to American Hi-Fi’s third and latest album, Hearts on Parade, scheduled to be released March 29th.
American Hi-Fi first appeared on the pop-punk scene in 2001 with the release of their self-titled album. Recorded in Maui, the band’s debut produced a radio hit “Flavor of the Weak,” with the song serving as a sort of anthem for bad high school relationships. The album also presented the slower, break-up based song, “Another Perfect Day,” putting American Hi-Fi in the cd players of heartbroken teens everywhere. The band’s second album, The Art of Losing, was released in 2002 and followed the same pop-punk style set by the self-titled cd. By this time, the band had toured with other musical groups like Eve 6, Our Lady Peace, Sum 41, Everclear and Phantom Planet, shaping their music and adding more “aggression” to their sound. Not long after the release of The Art of Losing, American Hi-Fi’s label, Island Records, dropped the band, leaving the group free to experiment with new sounds and styles. And experiment they did.
Hearts on Parade, the band’s newest endeavor, is incredibly reflective of the brit-pop influence cited by band member Stacy Jones. He said, “I think Blur might be the single biggest influence on the new record. I have always been a brit-pop freak and I admire the way they always re-invent themselves album to album. So many bands influence us; I like the opportunity to experiment with different sounds and styles on every record.”
While American Hi-Fi’s willingness to take risks and experiment with their sound is an admirable and respectable quality, the band misses rather than hits with their newest record. Sounding eerily similar to bands like Bowling for Soup and Fountains of Wayne, the band’s brit-pop influence merges with sounds like those behind the undisputedly overplayed song, “Stacy’s Mom,” and the annoying “1985,” producing a bland “been there, done that” sound accompanied by cheesy lyrics and nasalized vocals.
Produced by Butch Walker, a friend of the band and the man behind production for other artists like Avril Lavigne, Simple Plan and The Donnas, American Hi-Fi’s latest 11-track album offers no obvious triumphs, even though the song “The Geeks Get the Girls” has been selected as the theme for Ashton Kutcher’s new MTV show, “You’ve Got a Friend.” Each song on the record sounds a little too much like the one before it, offering a vibe that closely resembles the one found in the mainstream music of the 80s. The album’s best attempts can be found in the songs “Something Real” and “Highs and Lows,” but this can be argued that it’s because the two sound most like the songs produced by the bands on earlier records.
With American Hi-Fi’s Hearts on Parade, the band that has in the past kept their audience bobbing heads to catchy, energetically charged songs, has now left listeners of the third record scratching their heads and wondering where the punk-pop found in “Flavor of the Week” and “The Art of Losing” has gone. Jones said, “The entire feel of the album comes from change — both as a band and within each of us individually.” This change has, for a large possibility of reasons, resulted in the band’s failure to please. Maybe it is due to the band’s label switch, or choosing the wrong direction to experiment in. Or maybe it is just that a once seemingly semi-original band has reached a standstill while its competition continues to evolve, leveling the playing field and adding to the “already heard it” mentality present today. Either way, American Hi-Fi’s latest album attempt proves disappointingly average, confirming the idea that the band was better in its “youth” and that not all things get better with age.
