Good Morning Revival

Performer: Good Charlotte
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution (

Notes: Additional personnel: M. Shadows, Synyster Gates. Following the chart-topping pop punk of their first three albums, GOOD MORNING REVIVAL is to Good Charlotte what WARNING was to their obvious stylistic forebears, Green Day: an attempt to expand the stylistic confines of their music without losing sight of what their fans want to hear. GOOD MORNING REVIVAL isn't trying to capture critical favor, nor is it a self-important concept album or stylistic experiment. Instead, twin brothers Joel and Benji Madden incorporate new and different musical influences into their now familiar sound, and the brothers' lyrics feature a newfound maturity and personal viewpoint that was not always so obvious on their earlier albums. Indeed, the power ballad "Where Would We Be," a paean to Joel's break-up with his pop princess ex, Hilary Duff, is the most autobiographical song so far in the band's oeuvre. Elsewhere, the moody, pessimistic "The River" and the defiantly optimistic closer "March On" neatly define the album's emotional poles. When ironies are as delicious as punk-pop quartet Good Charlotte turning into the very thing they parodied on their career-making hit, "Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous," it's hard to resist the temptation to repeat the story, no matter how often it's been said. After all, it is true. Good Charlotte succumbed to every temptation fame has to offer and turned into L.A. scenester frat-rats, which, in turn, turned them into gossip-blog fodder as lead singer Joel Madden dated teen queens and super-skinny celebs whose main claim to fame was being famous. It's a textbook rock & roll clich�, and now that the apex of their popularity is beginning to recede into the past, they've fallen back on another textbook rock & roll clich� for their fourth album, 2007's Good Morning Revival: desperate trend-chasing. True, the group was beginning to stretch out on their first post-fame album, 2004's The Chronicles of Life and Death, but where that found the group getting a little more ambitious, Good Morning Revival -- released a full five years after their breakthrough, The Young and the Hopeless -- demonstrates that they now have real concerns about appearing fashionable, so they've adopted the two main rock trends that surfaced since 2002: dance-punk and '80s fetishism. They've morphed from blink-182 into the Killers, a stylistic makeover that makes Madden's swipes at the "plastic people" of Hollywood on the opening "Misery" ring a little hollow since his sudden pursuit of glam style seems like the epitome of L.A. emptiness. To be sure, the icy synth textures and guitar atmospherics borrowed from the Edge are the foundation of this album, but Good Charlotte aren't content to just restrict themselves to tricks they learned from the Killers; they sample from a wide spectrum of sounds and bands from the last five years. There's the pounding electro-disco of Rapture-lite "Dance Floor Anthem," which feels like it should be ironic, but isn't. There's the Blur/Gorillaz-aping "Keep Your Hands Off My Girl" -- its chanting verse borrowed from "We Got a Line on You," the hook from "Song 2," its beat from the Gorillaz -- and there's the Coldplay-esque shimmer of "Where Would We Be Now," complete with the finishing touch of piano arpeggio. This kind of calculating changeup would have worked better if the band had the hooks or the good sense to embrace their crass pandering so it's good trashy fun; if they signaled that they knew how ridiculous this shift in direction was, it'd be easier to enjoy. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Spin (p.86) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's Madden's search for love in the L.A. wasteland that gives REVIVAL a certain charm." Entertainment Weekly (p.70) - "[W]ith a high premium put on infectious choruses and razor-sharp melodic hooks." -- Grade: B- Kerrang (Magazine) (pp.46-47) - "They still have a knack for a mammoth chorus....Love is a major theme...and it's woven throughout the album like an insistent string, the thread holding it all together."

Good Charlotte began when a motley crew led by Maryland punk rock twins Joel and Benji started making the local rounds with their music and building up a grass roots following. In due course they landed a major label deal, and their self-titled 2001 debut album made their blend of punk power and pop smarts a huge success. The next year's follow-up THE YOUNG AND THE HOPELESS picked up where its predecessor left off, bringing the band to even greater commercial heights.

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