Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 07/25/2006
With
Buzz Ballads,
Razor & Tie presents an odds'n'sods compilation of all those massive
post-grunge/
alt-rock hits that not only managed to be played on innumerable mixtapes, but are also still treated with squeals of delight years later upon coming across them randomly. (It's debatable, though, how much these can really be considered
ballads, rather than just the gentler side of the bands presented.) If you nab this puppy from its TV commercials, you'll be treated with 32 tracks over two discs. And even if this version has only half of that -- sadly excluding gems like
Candlebox's
"Far Behind" and
Poe's
"Angry Johnny" -- there's still plenty here to enjoy. Pulling from a relatively wide pool of the '90s and early 2000s, it's admittedly a bit weird to have songs like
Staind's
"It's Been a While" and
Eve 6's summer-graduation hit
"Here's to the Night" stacked up next to cuts like
Sublime's
"Santeria" and
Live's
"Lightning Crashes." But then again, a specific time frame doesn't seem to be the point here as much as it is to have people singing along nostalgically, and for that, tracks like
Third Eye Blind's
"Jumper," Better Than Ezra's
"Desperately Wanting," and
Tonic's
"If You Could Only See" deliver capably. For alt-radio goodness, it doesn't really get any better than this. So depending on where you stand with
Default's
"Wasting My Time" or how much you really want to remember years gone by,
Buzz Ballads is either a godsend or an album from hell.
~Corey Apar, All Music Guide
;)
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