The Starting Line: Say It Like You Mean It : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Like Glassjaw and new Found Glory, the members of the Starting Line are young enough to have just discovered music when Green Day dropped Dookie on an unsuspecting world. No surprise, then, that this young (the oldest of the four is twenty-three, the youngest merely eighteen) Pennsylvania quartet seems to have built its sound on the Green Day blueprint, with plenty of bright, singalong choruses and hyperstrummed power chords. There's more to this than warmed-over Dookie, though. Not only are the Starting Line more ambitious musically, employing intricate vocal arrangements ("Up and Go") and even daring to go acoustic ("The Drama Summer"), but they have better things to sing about than teen anomie. As with other emo-influenced bands, there are plenty of songs about relationships gone wrong, but Starting Line also enthuse about the fun of being in a band on the giddily upbeat "Given the Chance." Hey, the kids are all right!

J.D. CONSIDINE
(RS 904 - September 5, 2002)