ALBUM REVIEW: Alkaline Trio’s “This Addiction”

Released on Feb. 23

February 23, 2010
by Ian McDonald | Entertainment Editor

Courtesy Epitaph and Heart & Skull Records

Alkaline Trio’s latest effort “This Addiction” is an entire album in which drug addiction is a metaphor for love. While the Trio certainly won’t be winning any originality awards for this one, they definitely have taken a step in the right sonic direction.

Excitement had been building around this record due to the fact that it was self-produced under the band’s new label Heart and Skull, and that guitarist Matt Skiba said it was supposed to sound like the Trio’s 1998 debut “Goddamnit.”

“This Addiction” is just plain OK in every way. It’s a step up from 2008’s “Agony and Irony” and 2005’s “Crimson.” “Addiction” almost serves as the musical link between 2003’s “Good Mourning” and “Crimson.” This latest record has some of the more experimental, keyboard-tinged pop-rock of “Crimson” as well as some of the straightforward and fast rock of “Mourning.”

The Trio have taken their recent penchant for writing sugary-sweet pop rock songs and plugging in lyrics from an angrier, more drunken Trio of yesterday. Bassist Dan Andriano has grown the most as a songwriter over the last few releases. Songs such as “Dine, Dine My Darling” and “Fine” are finely crafted pop punk songs with lyrics that are less obsessed with the morbid as Skiba’s contributions (“I wish to dwell, I long to be /In the blood and the guts with the birds of pray and the stinging of bees and bullets maybe”).

Overall, “This Addiction” is a good album but it’s not great. The record is currently streaming on the band’s Myspace page and I would recommend listening to it before buying it.