by Carlo G.
"Alone In A Crowd" is the third release as far as I know for these seven young ska punkers out of New Jersey and it is always on Voctory Records, as "Keasbey Nights" and the mini album "Washed Up!". Catch22 is the band that was compared to the most different bands: someoe compared them to Nofx, someone compared them to Reel Big Fish, someone compared them to Mustard Plug; I agree with the ones that compared Catch22 to Less Than Jake, not only cuz they play the same kind of music, but also cuz the vocals are pretty similar in my opinion and they both caracterized their music with the opposition between the melody of horns and the anger of guitars. I personally do not liek comparison, but if you never heard Catch22, just think of Less Than Jake with some years less, and this is shown on "Alone In A Crowd". From the "Intro", a short song in which you can hear only the cool horns, to the second track "Point The Blame" I understood how this album was all about and such tunes as "What goes around Comes Around" and "San Franciso Payphone" confirmed my feelings: it hasn't a lot of fantasy, it's like the "already heard" thing, but if you like ska with punk then this album rocks; in general I think that there are even worse bands and worse albums and quoting Catch22 themselves "Sounds good, but I don't know". Advice: if you have to choose between this album and the new one from Less than Jake, buy Catch22!
