I listened to Adelitas Way’s Home School Valedictorian when I mowed our yard. It was the perfect album as it was around 45 minutes and I could usually finish mowing the yard before the last note of the last song. What I really enjoyed about HSV was the way the lyrics and the music complimented each other. I liked the tales that were spun about relationships and about being defeated in various ways and yet finding a way to persevere. Thus, when The Getaway found its way to my ears, I anticipated the same type of experience. I wanted to replace HSV with this album and listen to the new tunes over and over.

I can’t do that. This album is a disaster and it starts out awful. Opening track “Bad Reputation” is lazy, relying on clichés like “I don’t give a fuck what you say” – really? That’s not been said before by a zillion other bands on a zillion other tunes – and that’s within the first 33 seconds. The chorus then relies on repeating, “I’ve got a bad reputation / Bad bad bad.”

Before I go on, I like Adelitas Way and enjoy them as a band. But much like the way I felt about Dokken when I first heard their awful Shadowlife release, when hearing this disc, I wondered how a band could rise so high in my mind and come crashing so low with a new release. Suffice it to say, I don’t like this album. I have to go on an archeological dig to find anything positive to say about it. The title track is a better constructed tune that I would have put as the opening track. “Good Die Young” follows with a pseudo-ballad, featuring lines like “So much more I would say if I had more time” and “We all make mistakes in our lives.” And it just doesn’t get better.

Songs are like a lawn mower and you need to nurture them with oil so that the engine doesn’t lock up on you, sputter, and become a piece of junk. “Low” tries to find a groove but there’s just not enough lubrication to get the parts moving in union. They lyrics are laughable – “Why do you hate me / why do you take me to the bottom of my self” – before swinging for the fence with “Sticks and stones can break my bones.” The first time I was mowing with this in my ears, I had to stop the mower and rewind this track. Did they really just sing that? Did they really just rely on those words in that order as lyrics on a song? It was true; they did.

While I despise the lyrics on this release, musically, “Shame” and “Deserve This” are the only dim, mildly interesting highlights. The talents of guitarist Robert Zakaryan are displayed with some blues-based riffs and a guitar solo that doesn’t double as a tranquilizer. Those two tunes are it, though, and they are idiotically tucked away at the end of the release. Maybe because the band felt like doing so would allow its listeners to accept the lyrics, which find them going for the lazy rhyme “shame / game” as the foundation of the song.

Finding positive words to describe this release is difficult. I am unlikely to return to Home School Valedictorian when I feel the urge to listen to a good Adelitas Way album.

Rating: D

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