Love Drunk By Boys Like Girls

Boys Like Girls are yet another emo rock band that appears to be stuck somewhere between their teenage years and adulthood. Now they have come out with their second studio album, “Love Drunk,” and it is excellent. Well, most parts of it are.

Singer Martin Johnson’s power pop vocals are best used at a fast pace when they’re fitting into a catchy hook or chorus. So on songs like the opening track, “Heart Heart Heartbreak,” or “She’s Got A Boyfriend Now” and “Contagious,” the band really hits their stride. The spiraling melodies and heartbreak-centered lyrics are reminiscent of Boys Like Girls’ contemporaries Jimmy Eat World, Relient K, and parts of Fall Out Boy.

The first single off the album is “Love Drunk,” which starts with a soaring guitar that U2 would be proud of. The lyrics of this track are also particularly well done with a lot of apt metaphors about a relationship gone wrong – “I used to be love drunk, but now I’m hungover/We used to kiss all night, now it’s just a bar fight.”

The parts of the album that are not so excellent are where they lose their momentum and Johnson’s vocals sound more whiney than anything else. Tracks such as “Two is Better Than One,” “The First One,” and “Someone Like You” could all do with an injection of attitude and more emphatic singing.

This musical backbone comes in the form of “The Shot Heard ‘Round The World” which starts off with an almost apocalyptically metal sound, but soon smoothes out into a spirited rock song. But falling short again is the closing track “Go.” It aims to be inspiring but does not close out the record on a very strong note, as the band almost sound like they are afraid of playing too loudly.

Overall, “Love Drunk” is the sort of mainstream, radio-friendly rock we’ve come to expect from bands like Boys And Girls – too much of it might piss you off, but the good hooks and beats will stay with you for ages.