Abe Lincoln Story “Kings of the Soul Punk Swing”

Album Reviews | Jun 15th, 2007

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Record Label: S/R
Genre: Neo-Swing
Band Link: link
Buy on Amazon.com link

This reminds me of 1996, when shitty ska bands needed a gimmick to differentiate their shittiness. So you had all these genre mashups and multi-hyphenated self descriptions. Or maybe this reminds me of 1997 when “ska” was a bad word and shitty ska bands had to pretend they were something else (i.e. poorly executed swing).

The Abe Lincoln Story seem to fall into both camps, even naming their album after their very own unique sound (even though I can think of at least 5 other bands that sound like this, and are better).

Okay, stripping away my cynicism on semantics, is the band any good? No. No, they are not. They have so many unsavory elements, I don’t even know where to begin. Vocals – the main singer sounds doofy, like an over-the-top MC at a Bar Mitzvah, while two female background singer irritate with badly placed be-bops and doo-wops and other cliches. All the singers sound ungenuine, like they’re 9-year-olds playing dress up with their grandparents’ clothes.

The lyrics are dumb, the songs are dumb, and even the instrumental is decent at best. Much of the album was painful to listen to; the rest barely registered. On the song “You Can’t Polish A Turd,” the singer laments mediocrity and I almost wonder if he’s singing about himself.

Bottom Line: They make Hipster Daddy-O & the Handgrenades sound like Benny Goodman.
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