Bowling For Soup - 'Acoustic In A Freakin' Church!' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Me With No You

2. Almost

3. A - Hole

4. 2113

5. Since We Broke Up

6. The Bitch Song

7. Last Call Casualty

8. Ohio (Come Back To Texas)

9. Emily

10. Two Seater

11. A Friendly Goodbye

12. Envy

13. Goodbye Friend

14. All Figured Out

15. Punk Rock 101

16. A Really Cool Dance Song

17. If You Come Back To Me

18. Turbulence

19. 1985

Quick disclaimer, I must admit that I am a big Bowling For Soup fan (not die hard) and I saw them live at Download Festival in 2007 and they were amazing! There was great atmosphere, and they even threw in some inflatable sheep for shits ’n giggles. The best bits about their live performance was stage presence, banter and humour, but unfortunately the best thing about this live acoustic album is the title.

We all know BFS as a lively Pop-Punk band from the lone star state of Texas, who mostly writes songs about girls they will never get and how much their social skills suck - that’s how I want them to stay, a live band with lots of energy and bad jokes. I feel like this record is another attempt to pick up the bank balance a little, as their last couple of albums have struggled. Every band fancies changing things up a bit every now and then, and BFS do this well with examples like ‘Bowling For Soup Goes To The Movies’ and ‘Merry Flippin’ Chrismas Vol.1 & 2’ but I don’t think they should be recording another Live Acoustic album in a hurry.

To be fair there are a few funny moments in there and they do interact with the audience as well as you'd expect them to, but they did cut out fan favourites ‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want’ and ‘High School Never Ends’ for whatever reason, but despite this you do get just over 75 min of music and a small hit of nostalgia.

If you like to sing along to songs you know, driving along in your car on a rainy Sunday, then you can’t go wrong with this one. Or maybe you're cleaning your home and fancy some light acoustic background music, but is very much a seasonal album that collects dust in-between summer barbecues and winter mulled wine.