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Album Details

• Artist: What Made Milwaukee Famous
• Album: Trying To Never Catch Up
• Label: indie
• Year of Release: 2004
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: challey on 2004-10-19

What Made Milwaukee Famous' first full length album, Trying to Never Catch Up, is certainly an interesting set of recordings. Each member in this four-piece band has been heavily influenced by different kinds of music, including jazz, indie, 60's pop, and punk, and it all adds up to a creative, compelling whole.

Throughout the album, a number of different styles and genres are showcased, including emo, power-pop, electronica, and acid-rock. Many of these songs are as unique and powerful as just about anything that's been released this year, but the band runs into a few problems during the second half of the album. "Curtains!" has a pretty catchy melody, but the vocals are way too whiny and give the song the feel of an emo band gone wrong. "Hellodrama" definitely shows its Cars influence, and while it could have been a big hit in the 80's, it sounds out of place on this album. Luckily, the band picks up the pace again near the end of the album with the excellent "Bldg. A Boat From the Boards in Your Eye," which combines a Doors-sounding keyboard riff with a rhythm that you might hear on an Elliot Smith record. The result comes off sounding like indie carnival music.

The rest of the album is pretty damn solid as well. "Idecide" is certainly one of the strongest songs, and has a really interesting spiraling keyboard riff that will be running through the listener's head for the next few days after hearing it. "Next to Him" could be a Cure song if Robert Smith was singing it, and may be the strongest Britpop song of the last few years.

It's really quite surprising that What Made Milwaukee Famous hasn't hit it big yet, because they certainly have potential to do so. The album covers so many genres in just over 45 minutes, yet it is still completely cohesive and never sounds forced. With just a little more work, the band may put out a true masterpiece in the next few years.

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