Were the ramones brothers5/12/2023 Some of that derives from the album’s comparative thematic lightness: The group may still be huffing fumes, but they’re not selling their bodies on a street corner the inherent scuzz and sleaze no longer feels quite so dangerous. On the debut, all this filth still seemed nasty, but there is a slight shift in tone on Leave Home that pushes the band toward caricature. Part of the Ramones’ charm is how they seemed like renegades from an underground comic book-a degenerate answer to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, celebrating all the glories that slithered out of the sewer. But viewing Leave Home through that prism undersells how the record sounds and feels very different from its predecessor. They even cherry-picked another old frat-rock hit (1960’s “California Sun”) to reiterate that their heart lied in the music made before the Beatles. To an extent, that’s true: often, it seems like the Ramones are determined to deliver an answer to their debut, writing responses to their glue-sniffing escapades, Nazi flirtations, and horror film infatuations. Maybe this consistency is part of the reason why Leave Home often gets dismissed with the praise that it merely offers more of the same. But by falling short of the group’s grand ambitions, the album crystallized the conundrum at the heart of the Ramones: no matter how badly they yearned for hits, they couldn’t help but sound like variations of their basic selves. If anything, Leave Home marked a step backward in that regard, peaking at 148 where Ramones went to 111. Stardom eventually would happen for the Ramones, but the hits they craved never materialized.
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