Pretty Flowers, Pretty Flowers

Is this the state of punk? I hope not. Pretty Flowers’ three-song EP has all of the romantic trappings of old-school punk but none of the guts. It’s as if the band knew they should include every attribute of the best punk albums of the late ’70s (anti-social lyrics, rough tuning, amateurish recording, bad sound), but didn’t really know why. It’s like doing physics homework with the class notes: you can get the problems done, but the grader will instantly know you have no clue why you did what you did. Pretty Flowers is what you get when this happens in music: ’80s post-punk pop played without any real talent into the microphone on a boombox. Terrible lyrics straight off of my middle school Trapper-Keeper. But, hey, they drop the F-bomb, so they’re edgy. Easily the worst sounding album I’ve ever heard (and I own Out of Step by Minor Threat on vinyl). Usually, attitude makes up for technical deficiency, but there’s no attitude here. What the band thinks is “apathy” or “attitude” on the album comes across as “lazy” and “contrived.” The most telling example of Pretty Flowers’ ineptitude is on “I Got Your Love,” when the drummer counts in the last four measures of the song about twice as fast as they eventually play it. But it’s punk from New York, so it’s OK, right? Sorry, lil’ Flowers — you aren’t fooling anyone.