Nickelback - All the Right Reasons

On an episode of Friends, the girls are waiting in their apartment for the boys to arrive so they can start barbequing. When Chandler and Joey walk through the door carrying a bag of charcoal, they speak in deep caveman voices saying, “Men are here. We make fire,” and then beat their chests. The girls give them withering looks, as if to say “whatever.” That’s what I feel like saying to Nickelback; whatever.

Chad Kroeger and company are like cavemen, grunting and shambling their way to success. It’s hard to believe that rock and roll that’s this ugly, incompetent, and childish makes the top of the charts, but it does. Nickelback is probably the most popular of all the traditional rock bands, and one of the only ones making a splash in any circles other than the avid rock fans. But why? Sweet Mother of God why? Nickelback makes a lot of the wrong choices, with a few exceptions. When they are really tender, when Kroeger lets all the walls of machoness down and becomes naked (in the metaphorical sense instead of the literal like he usually does), they actually dance pretty gracefully. But it’s the moments of over-arching maleness (and there are a lot of them) that sink this ship. And frankly, I take a little glee in seeing it crash to the bottom of the ocean.

All the Right Reasons is a lot like all their other albums. They’re 10 years into their career, and they don’t seem to have grown at all. The lyrics range from clumsy to disgusting, with lines like “what the hell is on Joey’s head?” leaving me not knowing whether to laugh or cry, at the same time as “it’s a little hard to leave when you’re going down on me” make me want to puke. The proceedings start off on a good enough note. “Follow You Home” has a good groove to it, and the lyrics are creative, if very stalker-like. “Photograph” also has a flow to it that is very nice, even if the lyrics are pedestrian and base. Then there’s “Savin’ Me,” the latest entry to the “How You Remind Me”/”Someday” sound-alike contest. Kroeger may be writing from his own actual perspective, but it’s one of juvenile delinquency, and only a limited number of people can identify with that. Also, some of the juvenile delinquency is celebrated rather than condemned, like in “Animals.” Besides talking about oral sex while driving (against the law, by the way) in the basest and simplest of terms, it describes the selfish and visceral actions of its two protagonists with the line “ain’t nothin’ wrong with it.”

Overall, the music is settled comfortably (read as boringly) in the post-grunge tradition of the mid- to late 90’s. While the lyrics are pretty sexually graphic in nature, the album does not carry an advisory label. Maybe Tipper Gore was asleep at the switch. Even so, it’s not without it’s good moments (“Far Away,” “Someone That You’re With”), but they’re just that: moments. They adhere to the exception rather than the rule. It makes me a little sad (and more than a little confused) that Nickelback’s audience is 75% female, considering that their music is so pig-headedly and chauvinistically male. Oh well, though. If a girl is really into Nickelback, that’s my first indication that she’s not the one for me. Actually, that’s pretty helpful.

Prime Cuts:
Far Away
Someone That You’re With

22 Rating: -8