"Brendan Goes to College," contains eight tracks of Headboards male/female rap vocal style, that mixes ska and pop music with rap. Rap is definitely their main style. They kick it off with, "Crank It Up." It starts out with some interesting guitar that will get your attention, and then follows through with female vocals. At this point it isn't that bad. But then a male enters the mix and starts rapping. This is where the song lost my interest. The female backing vocals were nice, and add a lot to the song, but the dominant male vocals rapping totally made me lose interest. Track two, "Everybody Wants Something," borrows from stuff from "Degrassi Jr. High/Degrassi High's theme song." This track is probably the best track on the album. The starting will grab your attention, and you'll want to keep listening, and this time the rapping male vocals aren't that annoying. The background music and backing vocals provide enough of a relief that the rapping male vocals are tolerable, until the chorus hits. The hooks and pop infected chorus make this song the definite album stand-out. The rest of the album follows the same structure of track one. Catchy starting, male rapping, female vocals doing a great backing job, and some ska and pop hooks that will gain your trust, and lose it again once the rapping picks back up again. The horns definitely add something to this album! It is my opinion that the horns are the best part of the band!

Headboard just didn't do it for me! I found the rapping made me lose interest in the album. As you can tell, I'm not the biggest rap fan. This album just didn't appeal to me. I listened to it a lot of times, thinking I might fall in love with it, but it never happened. In all honestly, the highest I can give this album is a D+. It has a few hooks here and there that will hold the album a float, but then a thorn will come along and sink it!

Head Hits Concrete: Hope, Fear, and the Terror of Dreams 7"

Headrillaz: Coldharbour Rocks

[Issue One // July-August 1997]