June - If You Speak Any Faster
June is overwhelmingly average, but at least they’re in good company.
You’ve heard these songs so many times before. The unoriginal sound of punk-influenced pop rock bombards you from every angle. You turn on your television and Hawthorne Heights is screaming at you courtesy of those “edgy” programmers over at Fuse. So you shut off the TV and flip through the pages of your favorite music magazine. My Chemical Romance is staring back at you. You throw the magazine down in disgust and turn on the radio, hoping to hear something with blatantly sexual lyrics and poorly constructed beats. You cross your fingers and wish for “My Humps.” What do you get instead? The gag-inducing tunes of the high-school hero of the month. You can’t tell which band it is, but your little sister probably knows.
You’ve read this review so many times before. Many of the bands have broken up; few have been missed. I could stop here. We all know the story. Unfortunately, I have a minimum word count of 350, so I will trudge onward. I’ll try to make this as mediocre for you as it is for me.
June is overwhelmingly average, but at least they’re in good company. Lyrically, they lack the ability to draw in the listener. The generic lyrics of “I Write B Movies” wouldn’t be out of place in a Weird Al emo parody (“I am contagious and this illness is what you want”). These words strive to convey emotion but only sound cliché and contrived; oddly, these emo lyrics are anything but emotional.
While the songwriting on If You Speak Any Faster is nothing spectacular, harmonization stands out as the strongest aspect of June’s music. Their use of two vocalists, neither of which is a designated screamer, is refreshing. In fact, it’s often their saving grace, especially on “Patrick” and “I’ve Got the Time If You Have the Argument.” Regardless, it’s difficult to tell most of the songs apart or even remember them for ten minutes. “Scandals and Scoundrels” and “Patrick” have slightly more pop sensibility than the other songs, but overall June prove they have little to offer with this unremarkable debut.
(Victory Records)