Search - Breakup Society :: James at 35

The Desperate Band Appreciation Society or, How to Age Grace

R. Conroy | Pittsburgh, PA | 09/23/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Ed Masley, the Breakup Society's drolly wise-cracking, songwriting rhythm guitarist and frontman, doesn't mind the fact that he's getting older. In fact, on James at 35, the band's debut, he turns the rock and roll aging process into a graceful display of strength.



Although Masley is perhaps best known as a cheeky-yet-earnest rock music scribe, he has spent the better part of the past 19 years fronting a variety of garage-pop outfits around the Pittsburgh and now Phoenix areas, most notably Pittsburgh's criminally misunderstood/neglected underdogs the Frampton Brothers. In that time, he moved beyond the cleverness that marked his earliest writing to the more emotionally ambitious songcraft featured on this release--songwriting that taps into the pitfalls of adult situations with real humor, compassion, self-awareness, and musicality.



While it's true that several songs on this album do, to a degree, address adolescent relationships, the songs address the relationship from an adult perspective that hangs somewhere between affection and resignation. The album's opening salvo, "Robin Zander", is a case in point. Masley asks Zander, the blonde vocalist for Cheap Trick who ruled covers of teen magazines in the late 1970s (when Masley was coming of age), to "go back in time" with him while he comes to terms with his own insignifcance in the bigger picture. (The fact that such a theme is wrapped in the guise of a catchy, mid-1960s-Kinks-styled pop is a huge bonus.) "Every girl I ever had a crush on had a bigger crush on you," he sings in his distinctively yearning voice. But when mentioning Zander's name to a roomful of people 20 years after Cheap Trick's heyday elicits nothing but blank looks, Masley is spun into a crisis that sets the thematic framework for the rest of the album: "But if all you are's a footnote/won't you tell me where does that leave you-know who?" The song works so well because Masley refuses to play on (in this case) Zander's fallen status for cheap irony or laughs. Instead, Masley conveys his bewilderment through a combination of self-deprecating humor, verbal economy and a perspective that will certainly feel familiar to anyone who has ever felt like something less than an afterthought.



Throughout James at 35's 16 songs, Masley explores the pitfalls of romantic relationships with nostalgia and an understanding of the pathos tucked beneath the surface of any relationship, much like what Ray Davies did in 1966 when he began writing songs that examined others' lives in a nonjudgmental, empathetic way. The results are nothing short of thrilling lyrically, and with stellar support from fretboard maven Sean Lally on lead guitar and former Pollen wunderkind Bob Hoag on drums, piano and production, the music is consistently gripping, as well.



Other track highlights include the relentlessly witty and power-popping "Introduction to Girls," the jubliant "The New Ronnie Spector" (rumored to be about Masley's young daughter), the bittersweet "Corn Palace," the longing "I Could Put You Behind Me," and the throbbingly neo-psychedelic "I Don't Give a Damn About the Sun."



In short, buy this record. It'll warm your heart with recognition, humor, grace and consummate pop smarts."

Hook-laden garage pop

RoadToRuin65 | Pennsylvania | 05/11/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Breakup Society definitely house their gear on the poppier side of the garage, and with their debut effort frontman Ed Masley has concocted a 16 song "semi-concept, semi-autobiographical" masterwork.

The three song opening shot of "Robin Zander/The Summer of Joycelynn May/Introduction to Girls" lets you know right off the bat what that "concept" is--and call them what you may- girls, chicks, women, Masley has a knack for writing songs about them and taking you back to that time "sitting on the curbside of your cul-de-sac...yeah, yeah, yeah.."---pure fun, pure summer teenage memories!

From there we follow "James" through his good times and bad and along the way get some incredible music too.."Favorite Shorts" is a power pop gem as is "The New Ronnie Spector" complete with the Ronettes drumbeat.

Masley explores some new territory for him with some distortion heavy vocals on tracks like "She Doesn't Like That Anymore" and "I Don't Give a Damn About the Sun", and though different, it is definitely an idea that works and works quite well.

This is a work that will appeal to many--power pop enthusiasts,those curious about the "garage revival", fans of bands like the Kinks, Replacements, and the Young Fresh Fellows."