Review

The F-Ups are eighteen and just out of high school. What does this mean? As the cliché goes, you get what you pay for, and in this case you get what you’d expect to get – high school boys, high school lyrics and a high school album. Duh, right? The F-Ups are high school-esque, and so are their lyrics, but what they have, unlike most recent high school grads, is a record deal with Capitol records.

With their first major label debut, The F-Ups – spawning from Minnesota – will make teens all over America wish they paid attention in geography, and actually knew where Minnesota was. The F-Ups is likely to be an anthemic staple for all the kids that love the “old school,” Green Day, but wish an untimely death upon bands like Good Charlotte.

Songs like “Lazy Generation,” and “I Don’t Know” with their lackluster lyrics fill this disc with refrains like, “We are the lazy generation, we are the lazy generation, we are the lazy generation, NOW,” and “No, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” Not one of the eleven original songs (track six is a cover) stands out as the one that makes this album a must have. With that being said, The F-Ups are good, at times, for comical relief as they sing about crack hoes in the track aptly titled, “Crack Ho.” Unfortunately for the band, the best song on this album is the one they didn’t write. “All the Young Dudes,” a cover of Mott the Hoople was actually written by David Bowie, but the F-Ups, surprisingly, do it some justice.

I filled this review with clichés because that’s what they are – clichéd. That’s not to say there isn’t any talent there, but how hard can playing the same three chords over and over again be? As they say, good things come to those who wait… and in ten years The F-Ups will be twenty-eight, and hopefully a lot more mature. As for now we’ll let The F-Ups sing their catchy anthemic tunes for all the angsty tweens (those kids who are almost 13) and teens – and the oddballs who want to relive their high school years.

Review by Melissa Goldberg

3 out of 5