Culture Blues

Album Review: “Yours Truly” – Sublime With Rome

Yours Truly - Sublime with Rome

I knew a lot of people who were really into Sublime growing up. I went to a ton of parties where Date Rape and What I Got blasted in the background, I got high and giggled to their cover of Smoke Two Joints, and I even tried to learn Santeria on guitar one summer or another, but personally I wasn’t really that into them. I neither owned one of their records nor skanked at a live show, and I wasn't particularly impacted by the untimely death of their frontman and musical engine Bradley Nowell. The reason I bring this all up at the start of my review is so that you understand that neither nostalgia nor bias in any way tainted my view of this record before I listened to it, something I don’t think can be said by most of the people crying about it all over the Internet.

Ok, Sublime is back with a new lead singer. So what? This isn’t really as big a deal as you would like to make it out to be. This isn’t, after all, the first time such a thing has happened. For example, while I know that most of you are too young to remember this, that guy who wears a hat and screams in front of AC/DC isn’t the original guy to scream in front of AC/DC (go ask your dad about it), and most of their biggest hits were sung by the second dude! Also, we are talking about fucking Sublime here; this isn’t Queen going back on the road and recording with Paul Rodgers (though no one seems to mind that), or Axl going out there with Buckethead (which is unforgivable, and I like some of Buckethead’s stuff). Sublime was a band that was better than 311 (I will grant them that much), but is nowhere near deserving of all this misplaced reverence. I understand that when tragedy strikes a band it tends to amplify and overexpose their work and people get lost in the moment but, come on, let's not get crazy here. Lastly, what do you want the other guys in Sublime to do, just not make music anymore? Their shot for real success was ripped away from them, before it even came, because Nowell passed before they “got big”- though it could be argued that they may have never gotten big if he hadn’t died. Are they supposed to just pack it in? Go tell that to Jerry Cantrell, and duck before he punches you in the mouth.

So here we are in 2011 and, because of a lost legal battle with the Nowell family (it seems that Bradley had trademarked the name Sublime), Sublime’s new name is Sublime with Rome, and they have recorded a record that, because the world has changed a lot since 1996,  basically sounds like Sublime, except incredibly dated. The “with Rome” subtitle refers to Rome Ramirez, a 23 year old Sublime super fan from California, who is now doing his best Bradley Nowell and trying to live the dream. The response to Sublime with Rome from the fans and blogosphere at large has been mixed; some are happy to see Sublime back out there no matter what the incarnation, and some consider this the biggest travesty to hit music since <insert some other asinine thing they got upset about>.

Like I said before, Yours Truly sounds like a Sublime record because it essentially is one. This album is 15 tracks of So-Cal ska-punk, which may have been a hit back when the Warped Tour was something other than shameful, but today just sounds stale. Rome isn’t the problem per se; he sounds quite a bit like Nowell, is a serviceable guitar player, and accurately recreates many of the band's dynamics, though he can’t write as solid a tune as Nowell did. There is nothing about this record that is original (I get that it is not trying to be) and, while it does a decent job of not coming off as pathetic or desperate, the problem (for the most part) is that we have left behind the genre, and forgotten about it like the Clinton years it soundtracked.

I bet people would have gotten into Panic, My World, and Lovers Rock 15 year ago. Now they sound like songs that would be accompanying shitty Mexican food at a restaurant that is trying to have an ambiance that would be considered “with it”. This kind of un-evolving third-wave ska is like Jimmy Buffet for people who are just starting to deal with the realities of hair-loss. Everything about this record is stuck in the past; the production seems  faded, the instruments sound tired, and the content is trite on every level, from chord progression to subject matter. If you want to put on a Hawaiian shirt, drink some Coronas, and get some rays while blasting this record at the beach, feel free to, just don’t expect anyone to want to sit next to you.

On some level I feel bad for the original dudes in Sublime. I am sure they never thought it would play out quite like this, and I can’t begrudge the fact that they are trying to relight the fire. It’s just a bit sad. There was a part of me that wanted to see this experiment have some modicum of success... but it didn't. If you don’t like this record because it’s not particularly good, well, I wouldn’t argue your opinion one bit, because it's not. If, however, you have some weird "quasi-ethical", or all-too-personal, reason for not liking this record, then you suck more than it ever could.