Ignore the lyrics, and the Scutches' new record, Ten Songs, Ten Years, is a fairly catchy batch of pop punk tunes in the vein of the Ramones, the Queers and Mean Jeans. Yeah, it's a tried ân' true style, but it's still a winner.
Ten Songs delivers exactly what its title promises, as the two-piece rips through a series of songs about break-ups and feelings and what-not. The vocals are nasally, the guitars are slightly surfy, the whole thing feels like a Joey Ramone tribute, albeit a competently played one.
Where the band gets itself into trouble is the lyrics. They're pretty basic, as they cover falling in and/or out of love just about all the time, in true pop punk fashion. Unfortunately, they also occasionally devolve into real groaners, like on these opening lines from "Glad You're Gone:" "I'm like an old poem that a school teaches / Yet Bobby Frost ain't got nothing on this." You know who else gives nicknames to literary legends? Fucking LFO. That shit needs to stop.
Still, this is pop punk we're talking about here. That's a genre with a proud tradition of not growing up. Bearing that in mind, the Scutches are fun enough. They're not mind-blowingly different, nor do they need to be. But they do bring the rock. Some of these tunes are actually quite infectious ("Only For a Minute," "Full Steam Ahead"). The only thing really holding the band back would be the lyrics, but again, this is pop punk. Those can be ignored too.