Guano Apes, Offline

It’s been a year since this album was released, but apparently I live under a rock and haven’t heard about it until a few weeks ago. So since music has no expiration date and I love this band, there goes the Offline review.

Sadly, had I never heard about this album at all, I wouldn’t have missed much, because this is one of the most disappointing things I ever laid my eyes/ears on. And considering I once listened to Dark passion play from Nightwish, that really is telling something. This is an album that sounds nothing like what you’d expect from Guano Apes, but, worst of all, it’s just a collection of dull vanilla tracks. With the exception of Like Somebody, Numen and Jiggle, all the songs are just one giant mash of something I would not remember the next day even after a dozen repetitions.

The lack of identity, however, is the smallest of the problems. What I hate the most about this is the shallow la-di-da-di-da that is present throughout most of the album. Maybe some people appreciate the fact that Guano Apes are now nice and tame and play good old fashioned pop-rock without screaming and kooky rhythms, but personally I am bored to tears by this type of unadventurous repetitive music. It completely lacks the kick and it’s not because it’s not aggressive anymore, it’s because it’s very prudent and redundant. I listen to music to feel challenged, fascinated, moved, but here there is no emotion, no creativity, no technical prowess… and when music doesn’t excel neither here, nor there, what do you cling onto? What is there to make you give the record another spin and to differentiate that band from thousand of others who play the same monotonous colourless music? Same with the lyrics, maybe some people appreciate that they no longer sing about dicks and underwear, but leaving aside the fact that their goofy careless attitude is what made them fun and captivating, when the alternative is some naive childish “reach for the stars and don’t worry if you miss, cuz you’ll land on the moon” type of bullshit, I cannot help but yawn. I’m no cynic (well, maybe I am a little), but this kind of bouncy upbeat music works only if I want to dance to it. If it’s just listening, then it needs to reach deeper than just the surface. Even if it does so in a less serious way, I come back to what I was saying in the previous review, that music has to evoke some sort of emotion, not just provide a noisy background that leaves you the same as you were before listening to it.

Apparently most listeners consider that if you don’t have bizarre lyrics and weird music, then you’re all grown up, as all opinions I read about this album include the word “mature”. I don’t consider this maturity and I’ll tell you why. For one thing, I’ve seen them in live shows and they’re as silly as ever. Dennis saw Stefan bending over and decided it would be fun to mimic fucking him, Stefan put a bra on his head and Sandra got on the shoulders of a very uncomfortable security guard and piggy backed him all the way to the audience and back. Very mature, indeed. Second, toning things down and repeating the same washed out generic pop-rock song seven times and calling it an album isn’t maturity, it’s just playing it incredibly safe. There’s more maturity in Anne Claire than in this whole record put together and that was 15 years ago. Jiggle is completely out of the picture (we’ll talk about that later), Hey last beautiful is indeed punkish (but so sad, I find modern punk boring as hell), there’s a nice little trippy electronic bridge in The long way home (but it’s so short and then it returns to the mandatory gangling) and Numen is indeed very pretty, but that’s not enough to hold a whole album together. And the thing that pains me the most is the lack of Sandra’s distinctive vocals. Of course she’s still in the band, but instead of using her lovely low rich voice, she’s mostly singing in a soft airy style that’s just as dull and tame as the compositions are. Words are not enough to describe what a huge fangirl I am when it comes to Sandra, she has great stage presence, she’s funny, she doesn’t take herself seriously at all and most of all, she has an incredible badass voice that can compete with any of the male voices in rock/metal. But sadly there’s nothing of that awesome voice of hers on this album and that’s their biggest loss. Without Sandra and her shinning personality and voice, they’re just a pale copy of System of a down (if you want to count their first years) or of The Killers (if you want to count this album).

Enough criticism, let’s get to the better parts. As I said in the beginning, the three songs that stand out are Like Somebody, Numen and Jiggle. The first is a cute bouncy song, with an interesting change of key and rhythm in the middle and some cool vocalisations from Sandra during the bridge. Nothing I would normally get excited about, but it’s a good song by comparison. The second, Numen, sounds like their older power ballads and is the only song that’s not bright and positive and drowns you in rainbows and kitties. The chorus is pretty lifeless, but the verses and the especially the bridge make up for it. I saved the best for last, which is Jiggle. A fun wacky song, with stupid lyrics and some infectious rapping on an oriental background, this is the one track that breaks the norm and comes up with something that’s not trailing for once. I couldn’t listen to a whole album of rap and some could consider the oriental instrumental a bit tacky, but as a short insert to shake things up, it works very well.

The conclusion would be that I hope to God this is just some lack of inspiration or a middle age crisis or a blow to their head that will soon wear off, because if this is the future of Guano Apes, I will cry bitter tears. I know most bands become more mellow with age, but mellow isn’t supposed to automatically mean bad. There are plenty of bands who have indeed matured and toned the aggressiveness and wackiness down, but haven’t lowered the quality of their music and I had hopes of Guano Apes doing the same. For the moment I am very very disappointed, but I will drown my sorrow in some Scratch the pitch and Rain and think of the good albums they put out. There you go, I’m not that big of a cynic, I can do optimism and positive thinking too!