Album Review: Have Another Ball

Today I was originally going to try write a review for the new alkaline Trio album, but instead I got distracted after listening to the latest effort from Me First And The Gimme Gimmes titled Have Another Ball.

Unfortunately it caught my attention in a bad way as this album is actually pretty substandard. Even though every Gimme Gimme release has had its fair share of hits & misses, their 7th studio album is by far their worst to date (technically it could be classified as their 1st album since it was originally going to be released as a b-side to their 1997 release Have A Ball).

Things don’t start off too bad with Rich Girl by Hall & Oates. (If you’re going to cover an artist from the 70′s surely you could do better than chose this unknown pair). While it’s got the speed & catchy chorus that Gimme gimme covers are renounced it’s rough quality is still slightly grating to the ears. The same could be said for the majority of the remaining songs which mostly contain lackluster riffs & an annoying electric guitars drone, which had finally taken it’s toll by the 12th song and just left me feeling irritated.

The cover of Country Roads is definitely the best cover version on the album & even though this was released on a compilation (Survival Of The Fattest), 10 years ago its cheesy sing along chorus and rapid fire drumming still stands up rather well today. Only The Good Die Young & Coming To America are also passable attempts, but just don’t have enough uniqueness to make them worth repeat listens. A slightly more interesting addition is the short 30 second track, Sodomy. This is originally from Hair the musical and I assume that Fat Mike was the one who picked this cover, as it’s both short & dirty “Masturbation,can be fun, join the holy orgy, kama sutra, everyone”.

The “la la la” sing along section in The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel) & the gang vocals on You’ve Got A Friend also bring a bit of fun to proceedings but overall the rest of the tracks all suffer from boring guitar hooks and some shocking vocals. While other Gimme Gimme material (Nothing compares to you, Isn’t She Lovely) has featured some reasonable vocal work,on this release Spike Slawson just sounds coarse & terribly out of tune. I can only assume that his vocals have always undergone a lot of work in the studio as when I saw him live this year he sounded the same (the fact that he was really drunk probably had a lot to do with it).

Final Verdict: Along with Punk Goes Crunk & Scarlett Johansson’s, Anywhere I Lay My Head (covering Tom Waits songs), Have Another Ball will probably go down as the worst cover album of the year. Why Me First & The Gimme Gimmes decided to release some B-sides (and crap ones at that) 10 years on from their first album is slightly baffling. If you’re a fan of the original versions of these songs, then you’ll only be pissed off with these butchered covers. If you’re not familiar these 60′s & 70′s tunes then I would suggest giving these repetitive lackluster renditions a wide berth (there’s a reason why they were originally left on the cutting room floor).

40 / 100 Pennies

Highlight Tracks
Country Roads
You’ve Got A Friend