Kids today don’t know rock n’ roll. Everything is an over produced U2-esque wall of sound and echoing guitars and choruses unnecessarily joined into the lead singers wailing vocals. One can only guess, of course, but it seems like we’ve lost some of the real humanity in our music and are now hiding it with auditory gravitas. It’s as though musicians don’t trust us to have our own feelings anymore, they have to sonically smother us with grandiosity in order for us to “get it”. What ever happened to subtly?

The current loss of precision in modern musical scene can hardly be blamed on Nashville’s We Were The States and their new album Rasa (though the pretentious names don’t help), they are but one of a thousand punk/pop/electronic/synth bands that have been floating aimlessly about the record label ether for the past ten years or so. If you’ve heard The Killers or Panic! At the Disco, you’ve heard these guys.

There’s nothing inherently bad about We Were The States’ music. All of the tracks are listenable and one song in fact, entitled “Don’t Ask Why” actually rocks pretty hard. But when did passable become the norm? Why have our collective standards been lowered to where we believe that musicians like Lady Gaga and the aforementioned The Killers are the cream of the crop? Sure their songs don’t drive one to take a cordless drill to their temple like, say, “Barbie Girl,” but God help us if this is the music of our generation.

Saying that We Were The States are untalented isn’t fair. They’re capable and dutifully in their riffs and vocals, but its all played by the standards of the “Look at me, I’m a disaffected twenty-something” play-book. They lack that certain quality, that middle-finger-to-the-world aura that rock n’ roll used to have flowing through its veins (that, and heroin).

Conclusion: Listening to We Were The States is like eating a hot dog from a street vendor; its nothing special, it tastes fine, but there’s no way its good for you.