Bottom Line

Eloquence (2005)

Jordan Rogowski

Do you remember being fourteen? Your parents took you everywhere that your mountain bike couldn't, Nintendo 64 was all the rage, and New Found Glory was playing the soundtrack to your life. Like most of their contemporaries, pop-punk band Bottom Line exhibits a strong sense of melody and a complete lack of character. They're competent musicians, but that never really transpires to anything of merit.

Hailing from Cincinnati, Bottom line have dropped 12 songs worth of Eloquence on the world, but is it really in anyone's best interests to listen to what they have to say? You've been here before: Sugar-sweet melodies, power chords abound, and lyrics about post-adolescent relationships. Guitarists Benjamin James and Dan Kinzie trade back and forth their vocal duties, and create some solid harmonies, but their frequently nasal inflections make going through the entire album more of a chore than it really should be. "This Far From A Fire" provides for one of the album's best choruses, a really bouncy track that also showcases some solid riffs that even if only momentarily deviate from the repeated power chords. Had the entire album sounded like this, I might be more apt to compliment it, but too many of the other songs fall flat. The other exception to this seems to be the album's closer, "Autographs," which also is a really strong vocal and
musical showing.

The band does musically change things up on a few instrumental tracks, including
"Saddle Oxford" and "Mystique." It feels like the former is placing you in the middle
of a speakeasy in the 1920's, while the latter is a short but engaging trip into an ambient soundscape. Had they expanded on either of those just a little bit more, the record as a whole might not sound quite so derivative and just overall lackluster. As one would expect from an album of this sort, the lyrics don't
add anything where the rest of the music falters. Though they're not bad enough to really detract all that much either.

Eloquence is a decent attempt at a pop-punk album, but there's still not enough there for a truly solid experience. Bits and pieces of guitar playing, and bits and pieces of the vocals sound great, but that can't be kept up for the entire duration and the album suffers because of it. Pass for now.