About.com Rating
If Dicky Barrett of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones opted to front a band made up of musicians that, while very skilled, were entirely lacking in any passion for the music they made, it would probably sound very similar to Joe Coffee’s When the Fabric Don’t Fit The Frame. But it would probably be better.
It’s an equation that looks great on paper – a bunch of old school hardcore guys playing a thick blend of street punk and rock with a dash of soul.
It’s a sound that’s destined to be great, right?
Yes. And no.
The problem with When the Fabric Don’t Fit The Frame isn’t that the band is lacking in talent, or didn’t know what they were doing. It just sounds like sometimes they didn’t really care about it all that much. And when you want to add soul to you music, it helps to actually have some soul.
To be fair, their sound is a sound that works when it works. Unfortunately, for about half of the record, it just doesn’t feel like it’s working completely well. On track after track, Joe Coffee pushes along, crafting what are on the surface fist-pumping anthems and danceable street rock tunes that unfortunately, often just fall flat, like the band is just going through the motions, without giving a whole lot of passion to what they’re doing.
It’s not even that the record is bad. It just, in the most existential sense, is.
The album does have some likeable moments, though, where it gets really good. “You’re Gonna Make Me Do Bad” is a bluesy dirty rock tune, and “Baby’s Comin’ Home Today” is a song that really grabs the soul that elevated the band, complete with a smoking horn section.
“I Don’t Want This No More,” a song written by vocalist Paul Bearer during a hard point in his life when he lost a friend, is a powerful sobering tune, and the record’s closer “Done And Done” is a song that finally seems to capture the energy the whole album should have aspired to.
I wanted to like this record; I really did. Unfortunately, instead of a record that hammers, it’s one that just plods along much of the time.