The Used’s “Artwork”

Oh, The Used. What can I say about The Used? They’re a bunch of awesome guys that know how to make pretty awesome music. And with great music comes great albums, and that’s exactly what they’ve done here. They done made great music.

“Artwork”, The Used’s latest release, was dropped last week (August 31st) from Reprise Records. An interesting titbit: Rivers Cuomo, front man of Weezer, produced this album because The Used decided that they kind of liked Weezer’s “Pinkerton” album for it’s raw sound.

I want to start out with a comparison of their previous album, “Lies for the Liars”. I’m not really getting this whole raw feeling throughout this album, or at least not as much as I did with Lies for the Liars. To be truthful, Artwork might even be a little too soft for what I expected from The Used. It seems a lot more straight forward and dignified than the previous album, which, to me, was a lot more scatterbrained and sporadic. Is it just me? Maybe you think differently, but I definitely don’t get the edge from this work that I’ve got from previous works. According to Wikipedia and other sources, the band experienced a bit of a band member change when recording Artwork, as Dan Whitesides played drums for this album, as opposed to  Dean Butterworth, who played for Lie for the Liars. Perhaps that’s what lost the edge of the band for me?

Wikipedia also notes that Bert McCracken and the band are trying to introduce their own genre of music with Artwork, appropriately dubbed “gross pop”. What’s your take on this? Do you get a sense of gross-ness out of this? I don’t. Personally, it’s just another album under the post-hardcore genre, with absolutely nothing gross about it.

Nothing too new here, actually. I expected something a little more from The Used, perhaps even a little more aggressive? But I still respect the effort put forth in Artwork.

Rating:  

Track Listing:

1. Blood on My Hands
2. Empty with You
3. Born to Quit
4. Kissing You Goodbye
5. Sold My Soul
6. Watered Down
7. On the Cross
8. Come Undone
9. Meant to Die
10. The Best of Me
11. Men Are All the Same

Get “Artwork” on iTunes!