Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 11/21/2006
The Manges once shared a split EP with
the Queers, and the bands sounded so eerily alike that the only way the listener could reliably tell which band played which song was to wait for the vocals to come in: lead singer
Andrea Mange's heavily accented, slightly stilted vocals, sadly, aren't a patch on
Joe Queer's amiable goofball whine.
Go Down, the trio's second full-length album after a full decade of singles and compilation tracks, continues the
Manges sound, for better and worse. The better:
the Manges could be the most consistently melodic
pop-
punk band ever, or at the very least they're up there with
the Mr. T Experience, and all 14 short, sharp tracks on
Go Down are instantly hummable bits of pure bubblepunk goodness. Just as importantly, they're one of those rare
pop-
punk bands that never make the slide from goofy and irreverent into juvenile shock for its own sake; there's nothing here that the average
pop-
punk guy would be ashamed to play in front of his girlfriend, assuming he had one. Even the double-entendre title is fairly tame, since it derives from one of the album's two covers, a surprisingly effective and nervy version of
Suzanne Vega's antiwar tune
"When Heroes Go Down." (The other one's a fairly forgettable
Ramones cop.) The worse: not much really beyond
Mange's awkwardly stiff vocals, and even those you get used to over the course of the album. Those for whom one
Queers is enough can safely give
the Manges a pass, but this album is a wholly insubstantial delight.
~Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
;)
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