-Trevor Wallace
Every once in a while an album comes along which is so unique, so revolutionary, that it defines a generation. This is NOT one of those albums. The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus’s debut album contains all the originality of the sixth Rocky film. (Seriously, how many times can they make a movie about a down-and-out boxer who comes back into the ring for one last fight?)
It wasn’t that Don’t you Fake it was bad musically or was intolerable to listen to, it was just that it contained absolutely nothing I hadn’t heard before. As I listened to it I couldn’t stop thinking, “I just know this CD is going to have at least one sad piano song and then at least one simple acoustic guitar song.” The worst part wasn’t even that I was completely right. The worst part was that the piano song immediately reminded me of My Chemical Romance’s recent single “The Black Parade” and that the simple guitar song sounded almost exactly like every simple worship song I’d ever heard in church.
But, in the end, I have to admit that not everything in the album was bad. The band members are decent musicians, they just need to push themselves out of the rut they’ve dug themselves in by doing nothing short of tap dancing on the fine line between having a style as a band and making every song sound the same.