It’s ironic that in their new album Fishing for Woos, Bowling for Soup frontman Jaret Reddick makes a direct reference to Weezer—recent critical reception for the two bands is, essentially, interchangeable. Both bands are led by men nearing 40, yet are still writing songs about their teenage years. Both bands suffer from cramming words into their songs; words that make almost no difference in the long run. Most telling of all, however, is the difficulty associated with remembering either band as enjoyable. Weezer may have enjoyed a few exceptional albums in their formative years, but Bowling for Soup boasts no such success, and Fishing for Woos is no different.
You might as well consider the first paragraph of this review a thesis, because my main complaints have already been lodged. There comes a point where it’s tough to tell exactly what crowd Bowling for Soup is playing for. Are they trying to spark nostalgia in former fans looking to relive their teenage years? It seems unlikely. The songwriting on Fishing for Woos shoots down any possibility of nostalgia, with the band coming off more like whiny preteens than carelessly cool teenagers. You can see it in the titles of their songs. “Friends Chicks Guitars” and “Dear Megan Fox,” are sung by 40-year-old musicians without a single hint of irony. It’s too little, too late.
There could be a book written about bands that don’t realize the importance of syllable count when it comes to songwriting, and it would still have fewer words than a song on Fishing for Woos. Reddick sings on “Girls In America”: “Another blurry / Picture from a trip / That only proves what / I already knew.” It’d be great if I could write what Reddick already knew, but he doesn’t really get around to mentioning it. It doesn’t take much to guess, “Hey, he’s probably talking about the quality of girls in America,” but even then the song is mostly meaningless. There’s no worthwhile cohesion among the lyrics, and the song reads more like an avant-garde analysis of “Girls in America” than it does an exultation. Songs go on in this way throughout the album, with unresolved lyrics and as close to no thoughtfulness as the band can muster.
The best I can give Fishing for Woos is that it sounds like an unrehearsed Green Day. It’s predictable pop-punk at its laziest, and it brings as little tact as it does originality, or timeliness. Unless you’re really dying to remember what your preteen years were like, there’s not much of a reason to pick up Fishing for Woos. It’s an album you already know everything about.
