Island
2003
The Art Of Losing (Explicit)
About This Album
Former '90s alt.rock utility man Stacy Jones brings the gleaming steel wool of his American Hi-Fi out of the box once again with The Art of Losing. The album arrives after a curious live offering, which seemed to exist solely as an opportunity for Jones to fulfill a Live at Budokan fantasy. Nevertheless, fans of the 2001 hit "Flavor of the Weak" will find The Art of Losing and its title track lead single worthy follow-ups. It's appropriate that "The Art of Losing"'s slick, reconstituted punk jerk found its way into a Coors Light ad -- its chants of "Hey ho/Let's go/I'm gonna start a riot" and "One two/F*ck you/Don't tell me what to do" take the packaging of punk for mass consumption to macrobrewery levels. Impossibly, the similarly processed grit of "The Breakup Song" is a straight-up knockoff of blink-182's "First Date." Jones includes another name-drop of Cheap Trick here, too; the production inserts handclaps, layer after layer of harmony vocals, and the thousand-foot-high guitar tone typical of songs mixed for radio. In fact, this is the sound that guides both Losing and American Hi-Fi, a band that's been designed and built for success in three-minute increments.
Track List (try tracks 1,2 and 4)

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