Listen: SNMNMNM, As Best as We Can!

By By Dave Ruigh

Thursday, April 21, 2005

SNMNMNM

As Best As We Can!

North Carolina has a habit of manufacturing products of debatable merit: tobacco, Roy Williams and now Chapel Hill’s SNMNMNM.

As tobacco and Roy Williams before them, SNMNMNM is prone to dishonesty and false advertising. Its Web site’s abstract claims of musical kinship with the Beatles, Radiohead and Brian Wilson are easily the most unfounded and synthetic I’ve heard all week. Culling most of their influence from early 90s SoCal slackers Weezer and Pavement, SNMNMNM should have recognized that honesty is always the best policy (especially when one’s forefathers are wholeheartedly righteous).

The first half of As Best As We Can! unfolds like a high school battle-of-the-bands set: Vocalist Seamus Kenny’s intoned whine is an octave lower than most of the emo dweebs he presumably espouses to despise, but his adolescent odes to “your mom” and a “left-handed girl” bridge the annoyance gap. The band’s signature, and only real claim to originality is Mark Daumen’s amplified tuba. Problem is: It only serves a rhythm function, which begs the question, “Why don’t you just play the bass or do something interesting?”

The band catches fire to some degree on the album’s latter half with a trifecta of energetic pop rockets. “My Defense” and “Indian Nation” have a throwback surf rock bounce while the breakneck ska/polka track “If” pushes the band’s RPM full tilt.

This triplet however, doesn’t atone for the album’s most offensive moments. Inexplicably, “Another Song Ray Hates” and the album’s closer “Why Ray Hates Track 5” are the exact same song. Whoever and wherever Ray is, I’m apt to agree with his view of SNMNMNM: As best as they can just isn’t that good.

Grade: C-

—Dave Ruigh

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