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Author Archives: Delores Grunion
TheSTART Ciao, Baby
TheSTART
Ciao, Baby
2007 Metropolis Records
Los Angeles based indie band TheSTART has just released their third album Ciao, Baby. While the previous albums Shakedown! and Initiation skillfully combined pop, punk, dance, industrial and new wave, Aimee Echo and Jamie Miller have changed their tune and their tunes slightly with their 2007 effort. The self-produced album features a stripped down, straight forward new wave sound that still occasionally bounces back to TheSTART’s signature industrial layers and crowd-pleasing pop roots.
Positive Elements
“Runaway” states that hard work is the key to success and that nothing is free. Aimee Echo admits that there are no excuses for her sins and negative behaviors and that her sins have left her spiritually bruised.
Spiritual Content
A romantic partner is described as sucking a woman’s soul. The singer asks her lover to “purify my endless sin” and seeks redemption and salvation from this obviously flawed person. On “Millionaire” singer Aimee Echo talks about selling her soul in exchange for romantic love and states that God has forsaken her. Echo states on one song that nothing can bring her down from the heights she’s reached and that Hell’s flames cannot touch her. A lover is described as a “demon in disguise.” Sex is described as a miracle.
Sexual Content
While there is no graphic sexual content on Ciao, Baby, almost every song on the album revolves around romantic relationships, specifically failed romantic relationships.
Violent Content
“Blood on My Hands” and “Runaway” mention shooting loaded firearms, breaking bones and blood as metaphors for a failed romantic relationship. One song mentions a revolution and contains the repeated refrain that Paris is burning. War and battles are used as metaphors for intimate relationships.
Drug or Alcohol Content
Two songs mention empty bottles or the singer’s laments on the negative results from drinking and alcoholism.
Crude or Profane Language
Ciao, Baby features almost no swearing whatsoever. The word “tool” is used as an insult.
Other Negative Elements
Many songs reference lying or dishonesty within relationships, often as putting on a mask, a disguise or a front as a way to escape from negative emotions. “Just a Fantasy” is a song filled with loathsome insults and disparaging comments toward an ex-lover.
Conclusion
Lyricist Aimee Echo unfortunately seems to revel in misery and sadness, almost to the point of pride. She wears her broken past and romantic failures on her sleeve and crafts virtually ever song around the themes of dejection, misery, rejection and pain. It seems that Echo has at least discovered half the truth; that a life of sexual hedonism leads only to pain. But she has yet to learn the converse of that lesson; that Christ’s love can liberate us from the cycle of pain and that, ironically, serious commitment to a monogamous partner is truly emotionally liberating. While Christians will experience the emotional wreckage of failed relationships, they need not dwell on that pain as we can always find joy and real redemption in God’s love. For teens, the pain of a breakup or rejection is magnified by the stress of major life changes, and during that tumultuous time teens need to take comfort in God’s love instead of putting TheSTART on the stereo and dwelling in their pain. Full of darkness and misery, this is one album that your family should say ciao, auf vedersain, goodbye to.
For More on TheSTART visit their website: www.thisisthestart.com.
Ugly Knuckles Got You Down?
Historigon: Tiberium 2007
This Month in History:
2002 AD: Grocery cashier Irene Baras is first introduced to Axes & Alleys editors Scott Birdseye and Jeremy Rosen.
1976 AD: Jimmy Carter steals the election in Ohio, Texas, and Hawaii through a vast conspiracy reaching from local precinct captains all the way up to secretaries of state. In 31 years no one has yet revealed their involvement.
1948 AD: Truman’s Jr. Rangers disbands after both members lose interest.
1945 AD: Private Yoshita laments that KP Duty presents him with no dignified way to bloom as a flower in death.
1893 AD: Junebug Johnson becomes the first person to successfully play The Blues.
1882 AD: John Jacob Astor IV throws his old, golden diamond encrusted toothbrush into a filthy crystal trashcan.
1763 AD: Some lost Englishmen, still believing the French and Indian War to be on-going, throw tomatoes at a group of French fur traders.
1621 AD: Father Dominguez rechecks the entire Bible before deciding that Romans 8:24 probably condones Indian slaughter, you know, if you really, really read it.
1561 AD: After viewing a nude woman sunbathing on the roof of a distant villa, Galileo Galilei invents the telescope.
905 AD: A comet passes near the Earth. They share some light conversation, a spot of tea, and not a little bit of naughtiness.
789 AD: Charlemagne invents the toaster.
713 AD: A Connecticut Yankee stops in Tariq ibn Ziyad’s court.
666 AD: Contrary to European interpretations of Hebrew numerology, very little evil happens throughout the entire year, including this month.
458 AD: For the 1500th year in a row, Chunglit’s tribe decides to hang around above the arctic circle rather than head south where it’s warm. Chunglit is, understandably, nonplussed.
212 AD: A curious Polynesian is the first person to put a skirt on a pig. The entire village has a good laugh before being destroyed by a lava flow.
109 AD: Arcden of Nicomedia writes the fortunately forgotten Gospel of the Lewd Acts of Kristos.
90 AD: Polius rolls a pair of fours and wins ten drachmas. As he collects the money, he looks up toward the sound of a distant rumble. Then he rolls a two and a six.
2 BC: Chief Klontik of the Chochogee tribe near the Great Lakes discovers that he very much enjoys hitting small children over the head with a branch.
230 BC: Yup, you guessed it. Those damn Parthians caused some more trouble.
540 BC: Antanexos eats some bread.
777 BC: Zhou Ping Wang moves his capital to Chengzhou because of its wonderful noodle shops.
1503 BC: Moses convinces G-d that ten is a much rounder number and so G-d agrees to drop the commandment about killing all the Indians.
2474 BC: A Golden Age begins in Ur as 3% fewer people die from dysentery.
3,002 BC: Chin Cho, following a group of pilgrims up the sacred Hua Shan mountain noodling on his flute, invents elevator music nearly 5,000 years before the elevator.
12,505 BC: Gern erg ma Flescht da Husignam Flender nu Mahthat Kimderchanniftpt spends the afternoon flecking a rock for his friend’s new spear.
12,506 BC: Gern erg ma Flescht da Husignam Flender nu Mahthat Kimderchanniftpt’s friend loses his favorite spear while traversing a particularly difficult crevice.
12,507 BC: While attending the memorial for his father Flender the Maker of Excellent Spear Heads, Gern, the first son, places a spear head in his father’s hands and weeps. Luckily his friend is there to comfort him.
80, 623 BC: After donning a panther skin, Kerga invents the little black dress.
A Message from Your Local Graveyard
