Search - Cute Is What We Aim for :: Same Old Blood Rush With a New Touch

Hoping They Get Better

T Rose | USA | 03/29/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I took my 13-year-old daughter to a Fall Out Boy show and Cute is What We Aim for was one of the opening bands. They sounded like many other bands and nothing was out of the ordinary about them (except for that lead singer Shaant Hacikyan is one of the hottest of the latest crop of hotties under 30).



But staring at a good-looking guy flinging his hair around gets old after 10 minutes no matter how gorgeous he is.... Then they did Curse of Curves and the crowd went wild so I made a note to myself to check out the song. I promptly much forgot about them after the show (Fall Out Boy blew all four opening acts off the stage) but my daughter played Curse of Curves a few times and the song kept getting stuck in my head so I put it on my MP3 player and really enjoyed it.



I delved a little further and listened to the rest of the CD and it's not bad. The #1 problem is that the songs tend to get stuck in my head and even though **SOME** of the lyrics are catchy and witty, they're too often repeated a ridiculous number of times (the main lyrics of the song Risqué are repeated no less than EIGHT times in under four minutes) and they're all pretty much "shallow as a shower" (to steal a line from "Curse of Curves").



I've read several online reviews where people deem Hacikyan a "lyrical genius" and that's a very sad statement regarding today's youth--especially considering that when Led Zeppelin released their first recording which contained "Good Times Bad Times", "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You", "Dazed And Confused", and "Communication Breakdown" and when The Who wrote and recorded their first album that had "My Generation" and "The Kids Are Alright" on it, they were the same ages as these guys.



I want to like CD more and this band has good potential but the CD falls short of what they can probably do. I can only listen to about half of it before I have to turn it off to hear something more substantial--even with the catchy hooks and cute lyrics."