The Getaway Plan - Other Voices, Other Rooms (2008)

Download Album:
Purchase CD:  

Let’s call a spade a spade. This music is not rock, as the band themselves classify it.

I import all my CDs to iTunes, and as soon the tray retracted into my computer with this appalling album, I knew I had been lied to. Let me be the first to tell you, there is not one thing "rock" or even "alternative" about The Getaway Plan. Unless the term “alternative” applies to anything our parents find annoying (which is anything loud). Or unless it applies to "alternative" to good.

This album in particular couldn’t wash the shit-stained underwear of some of the great rock bands of our time; rock music is supposed to have a certain power about it, and the lyrics are meant to mean something. Like Cold Chisel and Khe San. The classification of “rock” doesn’t even loosely apply to The Getaway Plan.

In their debut album "Other Voices, Other Rooms", they write solely about being 'oh so alone' and the inability to fall in love. I know it’s cliché to rag on emo bands, but, well, the only positive this album presented me was a new Frisbee.

It’s generally pretty hard for me to play a song and more or less dislike it, but what can I say? The Getaway Plan has such a generic sound (even stealing the title of a novel by Truman Capote to name their grossly common record) the music has so little substance and the singer is so, so whiney!

If 'The Plan have rock aspirations, they need to ditch the finger tap solos, palm muted chords, typical rhythm section bass lines that mimic the guitar chords and try something different. If I could bring myself to attempt a second listen of this horrifically mediocre CD, I bet I would find that the same chords are used in only slightly different progressions.

The Getaway Plan makes me angry. This isn’t even music that can grow on you; if it were played on the radio (and lets face it - that's their aim here), you wouldn’t change the station; you would rip out your stereo system and throw in onto a busy highway. That, or crash your car off a bridge into the sea.

The pure lack of originality in "Other Voices" is probably its biggest downfall; it tells me any band can listen to My Chemical Romance (who I actually quite enjoy) and create terrible imitations using cliché effects, generic chord progressions and lyrically, more of a travesty than Wolfmother, whose lyrics were the worst I had experienced until this album.

The biggest tragedy about "Other Voices, Other Rooms" is drummer Aaron Barnett. Unfortunately, he can hold a drum line quite well, and if only his talents were put to better use, he would be a good addition to any band…if he toned down the thrash beats just a fraction.

I know music is a subjective thing, and seeing that this band classify themselves as rock, I thought to myself, “Too easy! I was looking for a new band to get into” but how bitterly disappointed I was to find such a terrible group of so-called musicians.

While this band’s target market is left with disheartened feelings of self-loathing, I simply loathe myself for putting me through this entire album.

Time for The Getaway Plan to come up with a new strategy: How best to stop wasting my precious time! 

RATING: 0.5 out of 5

Download Album:

Purchase CD: