In a generation where music is predominantly purchased online, tons of wonderful music gets overlooked. When was the last time anyone went to a record store in search of new music? In light of this observation, I checked it out to try to find some new music.

While scourging through a sea of little plastic CD cases, a wild green background of leaves and an overlay of glaring neon letters that read “XX Teens – Welcome to Goon Island,” caught my eye. Its appearance suggested that the contents of the CD were going to be in the category of alternative, punk, or rock– I was interested. Given both the name of the band and the title of the album, I took a wild guess and said that the contents of the disk were going to be at least a little bit hardcore. This was quite an understatement, as the contents of the CD demonstrated.

After a brief google search I learned that XX Teens was a British alternative band that used to be called Xerox Teens until a little legal debacle with the actual photocopier manufacturer, Xerox, which then caused the band to shorten the title to XX Teens. The band is comprised of ten people: nine male musicians with a single female drummer.

The blaring electric guitar, incessant drum beat and hostile, almost angry sounding lead male vocalist of XX Teens were a little too much for my taste. The only song that remotely appealed to me at all was the song “Reprise” due to the fact that it had no vocals in it, though the song was less than three minutes long, which left more than a little to be desired. The most well-known song on the album was a little number titled “The Way We Were,” which had a strange way of making the lyrics loud, yet muffled and hard to understand at the same time. If this record taught me anything, it would be that not everything written in neon letters is worth your time.