Hello Rockview

Decently-executed LP, but this ska/grunge/garage combo felt like it was everywhere in the 90s and feels pretty tired even today. Points for the prominently-mixed bass and solid instrumentals, but mostly tuned out of this one as all the songs sounded similar and didn't grab me.

Hello Rockview is a late 1990s punkpop album by Less Than Jake. I never heared of it and did not miss much. It has pointy punkpop and punkrock tracks and also some ska. Lots of horns also in the punk tracks. Too bad the compositions don't really stand out and it also sounds very inoffensive. Maybe the lack of rawness is due to the over usage of autotune (though that does not show on first listening). It's like punk for kids musically, lyrically it's just uninteresting.

Nostalgia bomb. Takes me back to freshman year. Played trombone and was briefly in a ska band that covered a couple of these tunes. Good times.

Lovely pink/ska music. It's not too heavy and very fun to listen to

Yeah. I'm never going to apply critical thinking to ska punk.

Good enough fun ska punk - it's slightly later than the sound of the mid-late 90s. I feel like this was on the tail end of the ska punk zeitgeist; the bolt had been pretty much shot by the time that this was released. Indeed, I didn't listen to this at the time, so I'm coming to it new nearly 30 years after it was released, and actually 30 years since ska punk was fresh and in the limelight. I had some fun. You can't take this stuff too seriously, and that's just great. Not every record has to mean something, and I'd have a dozen of these over yet another morose motherfucker singing with their eyes shut, droning on about the torment in their poor pathetic souls. Captures the passing of a moment quite well.

F the h8rs love me some Less Than Jake

I have vivid memories of listening to the song All My Best Friends Are Metalheads while playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 in the 00's. This album is feel good skate punk/ska punk. A defining sound of the late 90's/early 00's. Very similar to The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish, or SR-71. Thanks OP for the huge shot of nostalgia today. Favorite songs: All My Best Friends are Metalheads, Last One Out of Liberty City, Nervous in the City, History of a Boring Town, Five State Drive, Help Save the Youth of America from Exploding, Big Crash, Danny Says, Theme Song for H Street Least favorite songs: Motto 4/5

That was certainly an album

I'm continuously surprised by the legs on Ska, when it seems like it should be a minor an boutique subgenre of Punk. Generally I like it fine, and this is maybe a shade above the pack. Solid musicianship, lyrics are pretty basic but work for the songs, the singing doesn't vary much. Typical of its type it benefits by no song wearing out its welcome.

I enjoyed that. Should give more of their stuff a listen.

Ska punk and me don’t always mesh but this was pretty fun. Had completely forgotten about this group.

I was never that into Less Than Jake, only vaguely aware of them. I listened to this album while getting rash for work but can’t really remember any of it.

This album has mad teenage boy energy and is a lot of fun. I'm not sure I'd put it near the best of anything, but I liked it.

After The Weakerthans yesterday, Less Than Jake today. Ominous coincidence? The negative comparative forms used to name those acts indeed kind of mirror my experience of the users' list these days. Where are the truly great albums left to review, goddamnit? I've seen the big names that should come by now, and yet they haven't popped up yet. Heavy sigh. I have to admit my mood this morning needed everything but ska punk from the nineties. I'm trying to judge this thing in its own merits, placing myself in the mindset of a teenager or young adult living in that decade (which I have been). But I would lie if I said the method is fully working... At least there's more intensity in the vocal performance on one single song from this record than there is to be found in the whole career of Blink-182. Funny to read on the *Hello Rockview* wiki page that auto-tune was so heavily used for its vocals parts by the way -- first registered use for a "rock" singer, according to the producer. You would never believe it on superficial listens (the "discreet", "merely-fix-the-bum-notes" method was obviously applied here). That anecdotal tidbit aside, the instrumentation and other production values expected for this genre are well pulled off -- sounding more pop-punk / skate-punk that The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, for instance, and yet still punchy enough to make this record lively overall. I'd rather return to my own ska punk references (The Suicide Machine -- that one feels truly PUNK! -- Capdown, the ska-punk tracks of Rancid and NOFX...), references that are clearly a little wilder and a little less streamlined. But that would probably be my own nostalgia speaking here (more on that later...). Oh and the lyrics sound "progressive" enough for my tastes, which I can only subscribe to The user who selected this album is a "perfectionist" -- very low global score for both lists -- but as far as I can tell, they leave thoughtful and balanced reviews, and I haven't seen a single heinous word in their takes, so I'm not gonna try to pick a fight with them. It just seems a little crazy that some of the greatest names in music history receive 1/5 grades from this person and yet this is what they suggest for the secondary list. But at the end of the day, music appreciation is always subjective, so more power to this user for raising their idiosyncratic flag high. To return to this album... According to Wikipedia: "NME listed the album as one of "20 Pop Punk Albums Which Will Make You Nostalgic", saying that it is "A soundtrack to shoving your friends, listening to 'All My Best Friends Are Metalheads' and wondering how you ever liked pop punk which didn't have a trombone." Yeah, well, this is just as I feared... It's never a good sign when the first selling point modern reviewers ascribe to an old album today is nostalgia. Honestly I feel "too old" for this music style now, at least overall... But I'm also too young at heart to prioritize said style when so many stellar albums in all genres have been released during the 2020s. Just to take an example somehow adjacent to this specific music genre, 100 Gecs' own use of ska punk in their zany and unhinged electropop albums is admittedly "unprofessional", mostly parodic and filled with all sorts of cheesy overtones. And yeah, it's HEAVILY auto-tuned this time around, ha ha! And yet, somehow, the best 100 Gecs ska punk tracks feel more alive, more vital, or just funnier these days than everything I've heard from Less Than Jake -- in keeping with the very strange times we are going through... The Wiki page also mentions that the CD booklet for *Hello Rockview* is a full-blown comic book, with the lyrics serving as dialogue between its characters. Wish I could browse through those pages myself. I guess this nice design idea also makes the album very endearing to Less Than Jake's fans. File this under the "1001 Best Album Artworks Of All Time"? At least for the booklet? 2/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums. 7/10 for more general purposes (5 + 2) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 66 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 85 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 162 (including this one) ---- Emile... Je viens de lire ta dernière réponse. Je vais essayer de trouver le temps de rédiger la mienne pendant la période des fêtes. D'ici-là, ben bonne année!

One's all for honoring one's 14-year-old self and remembering the sincere and passionate attachments of those simpler times. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea to eat Hot Pockets and Pop Tarts for every meal. This is basicalaly Blink 182 with horns. This whole ska-punk renaissance seems about as significant as the macarena. So shouldn't all who indulged feel just a little embarrassed by it? One suspects that a significant proportion of LTJ fans doubled down by, say, choosing BNL as the band of their young adulthood (and thought themselves smarter and more mature in doing so)? No need to add to list proper but no problem to replace Prodigy and NIN and Marilyn Manson and any other humorless act that mighta benefitted from more trombones and skateboards in their lives.

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