To a well-established band, predictability can be friend or foe. In the case of The Kissing Party, it's both. The Denver shoegaze-pop group's third release, The Hate Album, finds it treading some new ground while simultaneously sticking to old tricks, and through it all, rocking some first-class negativity. Let's just say the album is appropriately titled.
The Kissing Party sound nothing like Belle And Sebastian, a baffling comparison made frequently of the quintet. The band's sound never has mirrored the famous Glasgow group, and especially doesn't here. The closest the act gets to B&S likeness is that the vocals are shared by a boy and a girl—but Stuart Murdoch and Isobel Campbell they ain't. If anything, Kissing Party's wall-of-sound-via-clean-electric-guitars aesthetic has much more in common with neo-shoegaze acts like Asobi Seksu and The Radio Dept., and at certain college-radio-friendly moments, like Tullycraft.
While the band hasn't made much headway into new sonic territory in its last few years, Kissing Party has nearly perfected what it was already doing best: making straight-ahead, two-minute pop songs. Deirdre Sage's voice and delivery are both stronger than ever, and the album's production values have made leaps and bounds since the last recording. "You Made Me Happy"—a slow, pensive track—sounds like the first real step in a mature direction, as tape recordings and weird noises in the background add a newfound gritty layer to the Party's overall sound.
What really pop from The Hate Album are the self-aware, generally pessimistic lyrics dotting the record. Guitarist-vocalist Gregg Dolan has apparently reached his most acerbic stage yet as a songwriter, with lines like "I was fuckin' dyin' / chokin'" and "I don't need anybody," delivered with such detached cool that we actually have no choice but to believe him. And, while this is much of what we've already heard from the band, we can't help but wonder: Do The Kissing Party members kiss their mothers with those mouths?

From THE ONION'S AV CLUB, By Patrick Kelly

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