Call Upon The Author

Despite the facade of catchy and upbeat punk that blares out, Tourism/Terrorism gets tedious. At first it’s not entirely clear if this has anything to do with the music or the vocals, by the time Throw Your Hands Up comes along however, it becomes blindingly obvious that it’s not the music but Alex Levine’s strained voice. He adds a painful quality to the otherwise alright tracks.
In small doses the songs are good, but listening to them one after another with Alex’s constant vocals it gets a little grating. For instance on Isn’t It A Shame (to which it’s tempting to reply ‘yes, yes it is’) his strange warble smothers and dominates the song. Not so likable after all of the other tracks yet if it was to be listened to out of context of the album it’d be quite quirky, nice, enjoyable even. It’s kind of the same for My Block, the opening to the track is promising and catchy, it sounds good. That is until Alex blurts out the first line in an incoherent mumble. Again listen to it by itself and it is rather enjoyable.
Tourism/Terrorism is alright, it’s not particularly outstanding, there’s nothing too special about it and despite the complaints it’s good, just not that good.