According to its website, Drive Thru is “one of America’s best loved indie labels”, but judging by this selection of ‘greatest hits’, it’s more like one of Americas most laborious.
Whether it’s 'Now That’s What I Call Music', the 'Ministry of Sound Annual', 'Take That’s Greatest Hits', or whatever else floats your boat, when listening to a compilation, you expect to hear the hits, but to make it timeless, you want diversity, and the excitement of what track is coming next (see Rough Trade records for more details). Ok, so Drive Thru’s ‘Greatest Hits’ album delivers the ‘hits’, but as for the other elements, they have sadly been left behind.
The album opens with one of the pioneers of high school post-punk-rock, New Found Glory, who’s early classics ‘Hit or Miss’ and ‘My Friends Over You’ on Drive Thru have taken them to bigger and better things. However, if we take the remaining 14 tracks as the basis to Drive Thru’s artist portfolio, it soon becomes apparent that it is just a bunch of New Found Glory clones as the track selection deflects from the range and scope the label really has.
Something Corporate’s ‘I Woke Up In A Car’ and ‘Space’ are sadly engulfed in the post-punk quick sand, and after clawing through tracks by Finch, The Starting Line, Fenix Tx, Midtown, and Senses Fail, we draw ever nearer to the promised land. Then finally… can it be… surely not… YES! We have a breakthrough as the effortless The Early November acoustic track ‘Something That Produces Results’ refreshes the spirits like a whitened shirt on an Arial advert, but sadly it’s a little too late to redeem this dysfunctional collection of greatest hits. Take That have never sounded so good.
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