Plan B Pursuit

And All I Got Was This Lousy... (2005)

Jordan Rogowski

Plan B Pursuit are not fans of our current president.

The cover art here says it all. It depicts George W. Bush behind a desk, with childrens blocks laid out in front of him spelling a message. That message? ‘OI OI OIL.' While it may only be cover art, it sets the stage for the type of lyrical matter in a lot of Pursuit's music. "In God We Trust" lays it all out on the line:

God? There is no god down here! And if there was I'd be up there. / Peace? Tell that to the Middle East, cause on their corpses we do feast / And soon the war will be right here, and if freedom is a false reality / When you dig your grave, dig one for me / And if money creates such fascism, look inside the hand that holds the smoking gun.

Politics is not the only realm of American culture the band touches on, however, as such social issues as drug use and addiction are briefly put in the spotlight. The problem is that there's a decent contingent of songs that really don't serve a point, or serve a purpose. If you want the band's message to have some gravity, than there has to be some continuity as far as social and political awareness are concerned. There's a decent contingent of songs about nothing in particular, and with the band's rudimentary musical knowledge, the album suffers, because those lyrics were all that they had going for them. The instrumentation is some of the most basic and ultimately boring that I've come across in recent memory. There's no heart, no energy, and no technical skill to speak of. It's just some guys lazily playing a chord or two under what are at times, barely audible vocals.

This band could have had a strong message, but it instead was lost in the shuffle.