Dustin Hates Music

I sure own a lot of pop punk albums. I got this one as a part of a sale that The Hextalls were having right around the time of this album's release: four of their studio albums on CD and a shirt. I was never a huge fan of them, but it seemed like a pretty good deal for a band that I kind of liked. The Hextalls are a weird band for me to try to dissect. Bands like this don't seem to be writing music for the prestige or wide-spread mainstream recognition. They're writing music for fun- which can still be picked apart by critics but it doesn't feel right to me to take a critical look at songs like "Welcome to Pooville" or "I Bought You a Singing Toilet" under the same lens that I might use for a song like The Gaslight Anthem's "Get Hurt" or something like "Hands Down" by Dashboard Confessional. When it comes to pop punk bands that write these jokey kinds of songs, it feels like they really just need to write fun songs that ca...

What an interesting first album for this project! Let's go. I'm going to start off by saying that I bought this CD second-hand on Amazon during my sophomore year of college. I had already listened to it plenty by the time I bought it (thanks, internet), but there was someone selling a used copy that had been signed by Joe Queer himself and it was just under $10 (though if my order history on Amazon is to be believed, after shipping & handling the total came out $10.48). So that's how a physical copy came into my possession. As far as the music goes, I feel pretty conflicted about The Queers in general. I always have since I started listening to them in high school. I know a lot of people in general, punks or otherwise, give blink-182 a lot of shit for writing sugary pop hooks and making dick jokes- a totally fair criticism and I say that as someone who enjoys blink-182. I've always found it weird then, that punks would give The Queers a pass despite doing essent...