Disco de Dishwalla: “And You Think You Know What Life's About”

Where should I start, this album is unforgetable from start to finish. To be honest, I didn't like "Counting Blue Cars" that much when it first came out. But then it grew on me. Then when "Once In a While" came out, I knew this group was awesome. I bought AYTYKWLA the second week in release and basically listened to nothing but "Once In a While." Then, one day, sitting in my room after a horrible day at school, I listened to the whole album for once and I was mezmorized. It's like J.R. Richards wrote the songs based on my life. By far this album is number one in my book. Now that Opaline has been released, it may fall to number two. "Until I Wake Up" is reason enough to buy this album. It has become a fan favorite and the lyrics are unmatched by any other song writer. Don't listen to the other reviewers that say this album has bad lyrics. They must listen to bands like Blink 182 and Limp Bizket that dumb down the music world. If this album did not fall victim to A&M's merge with Interscope, this band would have easily won a Grammy.

This Cd is incredible. It doesn't have as many fast tempo songs as Pet Your Friends, but I'm down with that. The song writing is superb. Thx Dishwalla for hours of listening bliss!!

'And You think You Know What Life's About' takes aspects of much of Dishwalla's last album, 'Pet Your Friends', and darkens it with a soul stirring atmosphere not apparent in the previous effort. 'Pet Your Friends' has a lighter feel to it, packed with bouncy rock songs such as 'Charlie Brown's Parents' and the unmistakeable 'Counting Blue Cars', but AYTYKWLA is heavier, more probing and experimental. The album is chilled out, the kind of album you can easily kick back and relax to, but at the same time manages to grab at u, absorb u and make u feel exactly what each song is trying to say.

Highlights are 'Once In A While', 'Truth Serum' and 'The Bidge Song', each with thier own message to convey and atmosphere to enjoy. Indeed the only dissapointing effort from the album is 'Pop Guru', which seems to lack the touch of soul each other track inherits from lead man J.R Richards.

The secret to this album is standout track and fan's favourite, 'Until I Wake Up.' Quite simply one of the greatest songs ever written, it captures the sort of honest emotion in a song which is sometimes hard to find in this day and age. Its beautiful lyrics and huge chorus are quite startling. Admittedly a biased opinion prevails in my evaluation of this song as it happens to be my all time favourite!

In conclusion, AYTUKWLA steers in a very different direction to their previous work, but manages to be off the same high quility. But with the highly anticipated release of Dishwalla's next album 'Opaline' on the horizon it seems things can only get better for this talented 5 piece. Watch this space...

Dishwalla does what very few bands do well: writes deep, thoughtful lyrics with a catchy melody. This album has darker overtones than some of their others, but it works well. My favorite album by Dishwalla is Opaline, but this is a close runner-up. My favorite tracks: track 2 - "Once In Awhile," track 3 - "Bottom of the Floor" (one of my top 3 Dishwalla songs of all time; the lyrics of the CD's title come from this song), and track 11 - "The Bridge Song."

I didn't like AYTYKWLA at first but after listening to it numerous times I've grown to love it! It still ranks as my least favourite Dishwalla album but it does feature their best song of all time, Until I Wake Up. I'm glad I gave And You Think... another chance because it's yet another great album from a terribly underrated band.