A - Hi-Fi Serious ( Audio CD ) 2002

A's Hi-Fi Serious so ably demonstrates, sometimes it's just a matter of waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with you. At the time their second album, Monkey Kong, was released, A were pegged as a poor Brit-rock substitute for their angst-heavy American peers. Come their third album, though, A sound every bit the globe-straddling international rock band. Marking out the crucial mid-point between the impassioned emo-pop of Jimmy Eat World and the dumb-assed gross-out punk splatter of Blink-182, Hi-Fi Serious is a cackling, cartoonish descent into fearlessly tuneful power-pop larkery. It's saturated in an obvious love for beach-bum Americana: the lines "It's an endless summer / It's the summer forever" breeze through the song "Pacific Ocean Blue." And while the five are frighteningly eager to dally like playful puppies through all rock's cheesiest clichés--just check out guitarist Mark Chapman's Eddie Van Halen-style fretwork on "The Distance"—the music is always performed with enough charm to win the day.

CONDITION: NEW, Punched UPC

TRACK LISTING

1 Nothing 3:43
2 Something's Going On 2:58
3 6 O'Clock On A Tube Shop 3:14
4 Going Down 4:09
5 Took It Away 3:29
6 Starbucks 3:18
7 The Springs 4:28
8 Shut Yer Face 3:43
9 Pacific Ocean Blue 3:27
10 The Distance 3:37
11 W.D.Y.C.A.I. 3:27
12 Hi-Fi Serious 5:57
13 Champions Of Endings