A few years ago I was challenged to listen to a list of albums that I had missed first time around. This time it's the ANT-hology of Alien Ant Farm...
I must admit that Alien Ant Farm didn’t sound like what I thought they would. That’s neither a good thing nor a bad thing, just something to note. The only track I had heard of theirs before was one that happens to be on this album, their cover of the Michael Jackson song Smooth Criminal, which hit the charts back in 2001. I only remember that one because, although I’m not a huge MJ fan, this is my favourite song of his and I thought they did a not bad job of it.
Other than that, though, this was a whole new experience for me and, unexpectedly, I found this to be quite a mixed album. I had kind of pigeonholed the band in the skater-punk-lots-of-thrashy-guitars-and-whiny-college-boy-vocals category, so there were songs on the album that out and out surprised me – I mean the reggae beat on Flesh and Bone was almost exactly the opposite of what I was expecting. Contrast that with the pure metal backing on both Courage and Wish and the Oasis Wonderwall-ness of Happy Death Day and Universe (being compared to Oasis is not a good thing in my book btw) and there’s a fairly eclectic sound to the band. They did, however, stick true to expected form for a few of the tracks – Movies, Summer and Calico could have been a song from any of the genre bands around at the time, although Whisper and Stranded were heavier and more Green Day-ish.
However, my favourite track on the album was Attitude. I know it was my favourite because it was the only one of the lot that I actually checked what was playing the first time I heard it (usually track notes wait til the second or third listen through). It is just so radically different to all the rest of the tracks on the album, with a solid 80s Miami Sound Machine sound to the synth and percussion at the start, that I thought I must have hit random play and got something totally different. The excellent stripped back guitar throughout the song also gives the vocals a chance to shine without either fighting through the normal wall of sound or having to go all emo in a ballad and the harmonies were interesting and polished. It’s a very incongruous track alongside the rest of the album, and the better for it.
So I guess at least I can say I have listened to Alien Ant Farm now so you can consider me to have attended class; even if I wasn’t educated, nothing was awful. Would I listen to it again? Well, I wouldn’t switch it off which I might have done before this, so I guess you can call that a win. And I do really appreciate the pun in the album title.
Image - Amazon
