Qualifiers are wonderful things. They permit one to compliment without sincerity, acknowledge without giving proper credit. Feign appreciation. Pretend to like. All while giving the impression that informed, well thought-out decisions are being mulled, considered and rendered. I daresay they're an indispensable tool for the modern know-it-all. For instance, witness the subversion of this mild, hardly-a-compliment-at-all, applied to the third full-length album by Virginia's Ann Beretta, New Union... Old Glory:

Qualified statement:
There's nothing wrong with this music... except...

Implied meaning:
Except it's un-noteworthy. Soft. It has all the edge of the plastic bowie knife I used to have when I was six.

New Union... Old Glory starts out promising, or at least, encouraging. The first two tracks don't so much set expectations as meet them. Rob Huddleston's ham-fisted, every-punk vocal style is reliable, and in perfect attendance on every song. The music contains the same brainless autopilot constructs as the overwhelming majority of middle-of-the-road punk, sounding like they were written on lack of sleep and highway hypnosis.

Qualified statement:
There's nothing wrong with this music... but...

Implied meaning:
But it's static. Don't expect me to write that Ann Beretta have changed. This isn't a compact disc; it's a hamster wheel.

New direction? Impossible. New Union... Old Glory is a musical racetrack, a closed circuit. Aside from the Dale Earnhardt detour (i.e. into a wall), there's only a single vector-- around and around the same old course. Death, taxes and second rate pop-punk.

Qualified statement:
There's nothing wrong with this music... aside from...

Implied meaning:
Aside from the inherited and diluted Clash worshiping. Ann Beretta have never balked at plundering the styles, hooks and melodies of their favorite forebears-- including, but not limited to, British first generation punk.

A track like "Better Days" would have seemed a more natural fit for Foundation, Huddleston's gentler, more emasculated project from earlier this year. Here, the song just seems artificially sped up. "Russ' Song" and "No Rest for the Wicked," though, take breathers from mediocrity to generate some genuine interest. The former possesses an infectious energy reminiscent of guilty pleasures like NOFX. Even so, it falls apart a bit in the middle eight with a corny and unnecessary acoustic break. The latter features some classy (and classic) Jerry Lee Lewis rhythm piano that sets off the anthemic chorus nicely. But a stool needs a least three legs to stand on, and a CD even more than that.

There's nothing wrong with this music.

Thousands of people will love this album. I just don't happen to be one of them. For hundreds, it will become their all-time favorite, even if only for a couple of weeks. I mean, who am I to tell them they're wrong? Let 'em figure it out for themselves.

-John Dark