Alkaline Trio: Good Mourning : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Alkaline Trio mainline enough four-chord adrenalin to keep the kids pogo-hopping like they're at a Sum 41 concert. But the Chicago trio stands apart from most of its post-Green Day brethren with its penchant for transforming sour emotion into sinister fantasy. On Good Mourning, the band's fourth album, there's enough mayhem and murder to satisfy any Scarface groupie. Singer-guitarist Matt Skiba kicks things off with the ghoulish ditty "This Could Be Love," about playing in his own blood. "All on Black" twists a schoolyard joke into a macabre fantasy spiked with satanic imagery; "Donner Party (All Night)" invokes the infamous Old West tragedy as a metaphor for a doomed relationship. On the closing acoustic ballad, "Blue in the Face," Skiba sounds like he's barely hanging on. "I haven't slept since I met you," he rasps. And with nightmares like he describes, who can blame him?

GRET KOT
(From RS 923, May 29, 2003)