The Reunion Show
Kill Your Television (Victory)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Space City Rock, ???

If there’s anything preventing me from saying that the Reunion Show is nothing but the latest post-Weezer mating of Van Halen and the Cars, it’s only the fact that I’m sure someone else has thought they’ve come up with the same idea since Kill Your Television hit the streets. They’re loud, they’re zippy, they’ve got what sounds like tons of energy, but there’s a lot of music that sounds like this these days, and the Reunion Show doesn’t have that one undeniable song that would make them stand out from the rest of the pack. The synth lines on songs like “New Rock Revolution” and “On A Scale Of One To Awesome (You’re Pretty Great)” are about as perfunctory and uninspired as new wavey keyboards can get, as if the band knew that it just had to have a certain sound but had no idea why or what to do with it. What’s worse, I think they’re too busy trying to be clever that they don’t quite realize what they’re saying. I mean, it’s one thing that the refrain of “Dedication” (“This goes out to anyone who claims to know something about nothing at all”) sounds profound but means nothing. It’s another to fail to realize that the title of “On A Scale Of One To Awesome (You’re Pretty Great)” is actually a bit of an insult.

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