Logan Square
Pessimism & Satire
Fearless
A lot of people love disposable cameras. They’re cheap, they’re readily available and they take pictures. Sure, so maybe your pictures won’t be of the same kind of quality that you’d get from using professional gear, but your average consumer doesn’t know that much about photography anyway. They wouldn’t even know what to do with the real deal. Disposable camera quality may not be top notch, but it’s solid, and in most cases it’s damn near good enough. Your friends and neighbors will most likely never know the difference.
If punk rock was a camera, Logan Square would be the disposable Kodak Max Outdoor Single Use camera. OK, so that sounds horribly mean, but I don’t mean it as an insult really. It’s just the truth.
Pessimism and Satire is a solid album. It’s not going to challenge you, or change the way you look at anything. It’s not going to inspire imitators, for it, itself, is an imitation. And that’s not a bad thing necessarily. Logan Square is a fun, hard-working suburban punk rock act that can trace the ancestry of their sound back to Jawbreaker’s Dear Me by way of The Alkaline Trio, The Movie Life, and Armor For Sleep during their more “emo” moments.
For all their lack of originality, it’s hard to completely discount tracks like “Misdirection” and “I’m So Sorry,” which are both catchy and well-written songs with plenty of power and energy to get any rock club kid bouncing. The polish added by producer Sean O’Keefe elevates this album to something that can stand confidently on the same plane as the other acts O’Keefe has worked with, including Fall Out Boy, Hawthorne Heights and Motion City Soundtrack. Logan Square is a perfect opener for any of these other bands, all of whom seem to be enjoying more than their share of the limelight these days. Aren’t they a tad bit disposable as well? Seems that way to me.
So yeah, Logan Square may be destined to be one of those bands you’re constantly confusing with some other, more well-known name, but so what? The music they make is enjoyable enough, and I’m willing to bet they put on a pretty rocking live show if this album is any indication. So what if they’re a bit disposable? Isn’t most music these days?
Logan Square: http://www.myspace.com/logansquare
