Review: The Decals

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The Decals
“Drive-By Kiss Off”
(Fork in Hand Records)

I’m on a co-ed softball team.  I pitch.  There are some weird rules to make the game fair for all participants.  For example, if I walk a male batter, he instantly goes to second base and the girl who bats after him automatically goes to first, thereby ensuring that a nefarious player couldn’t just walk all the dudes and pitch to only the ladies.  The Decals are a co-ed “punk” band and I’m wishing I could put some sort of handicap on them as well.  Maybe some sort of stipulation along the lines of “if your singer is a girl, then your guitarist must be a man” or something like that, because the noises coming out of my computer speakers right now almost border mediocrity.  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Michelle Paulhus’ vocals didn’t remind me so much of Debbi Peterson, lead singer of The Bangles.  As if their crappy blink-182 sound wasn’t enough, I’ve got ‘Walk Like an Egyption’ (or was that the Go-Go’s?) in my head while I’m listening to this relentlessly bad recording.  Every single one of these God-awful tracks sounds exactly the same and why it’s still in my player is beyond me.