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SONGS NOT TO GET MARRIED TO
(Vagrant)
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The title of this fourth album by Reggie and the Full Effect, a long-running side project of Get Up Kids keyboardist James Dewees, nods to more than the cynical boys-will-be-boys attitude that has recently supplanted the emo scene’s original sensitive-guy mood. It’s supposed to be a reference to Dewees’s recent divorce, which caused him to transform Reggie from a goofy outlet for half-baked ideas about synth-pop and grind metal into a source of the same sort of heavy-hearted confessionals the Get Up Kids write. You can’t begrudge Dewees the need to get some things off his chest: "One more thing you can replace," he wails over thick guitar chug in "Caving," and you can hear the regret in his voice. In "Take Me Home, Please," he decides that "I’ve got to let you know now how much you mean to me," even if it’s too late. But if the serious stuff on Songs isn’t as boring as you’d expect — with the exception of "Thanks for the Misery," a reverb-soaked dirge of an open letter to his ex-wife — the jokes, including one about a crack-loving Alabama mother, are more leaden than they’ve ever been. (Reggie and the Full Effect join New Found Glory and Eisley on a WFNX-sponsored show this Friday, March 25, at the Palladium, 261 Main Street in Worcester; call 800-477-6849.)
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