Winning this year’s inaugural Jaron Outta Evan And Jaron Award for most bizarre rawk-to-country turn, it’s… who is it, Alex?
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Alex Ostroff: This guy was the lead singer of Default? As in CanCon alt-rock Default? As in inescapable early high school radio staple “Wasting My Time” Default? “Wastin’ Gas” isn’t a terrible country song, and Smith’s propensity for heavier guitars brings it in line with a lot of current bro country. The memory of Default hangs over this, though, emphasizing just how calculated his entire shtick is — B.C. boys don’t normally sport Southern twang — and highlighting that his lyrical concerns haven’t evolved much in a decade and a half.
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Patrick St. Michel: Wastin’ my time with his knuckleheaded loud voice, more like it.
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Alfred Soto: Now here’s something: a vocal melody that reminds me of “Margaritaville” sung by a guy who’s studied hair metal singers. Its overall insouciance pleases my ear as much as $2 gas does my wallet.
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Anthony Easton: Oh, Canada, you never sound more out of date when you try to be up to date. That Dallas Smith comes out of hard rock and that he is generic is disappointing considering the pedigree of ex-punk singer, now legendary cowboy singer Corb Lund or ex-hardcore singer Ridley Bent, who has sang cleverly about the shift of genre. Worth slightly less by how shamelessly Smith has hired American writers and how shamelessly he has failed at it.
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Micha Cavaseno: It’s weird how easily I’m receptive to Nickelback-style “modern rock” if it’s got a descriptive car-for-life metaphor I haven’t heard too much yet and a intro that sounds like “Baba O’Riley” — which I actually hate.
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Megan Harrington: Killing time and wasting gas are not particularly good metaphors for relationships. It’s borderline sociopathic to consider human companionship something you do between more important activities. But we’ve all been here, even if we don’t describe it with such callous cliches. An even bigger problem is that Smith can’t play his own narrator in the music video because no one wants to see a pointedly visibly married man with a thinning hairline make trouble with a young girl like his personal development halted at eighteen. Take a page from the Rascal Flatts book and write some love songs about the glory of lifelong commitment, dude.
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David Sheffieck: The timing is dead-on, with gas prices about half what they were the last time I was driving, but no matter how soaring the chorus, how is “Wastin’ Gas” going to sound when it means draining half your paycheck on driving around to prove your crazy love?
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Brad Shoup: Hey, at these prices, waste all the gas you want, baby. There’s a little “Springsteen” in his whoas and in the snap he brings to the refrain. The guitar becomes a cop siren, swallowing up the road as fast as Smith can leave it. His is a thoroughly determined performance, loads of precise phrasing tumbling from a tight expression.
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Mo Kim: For such an ostensibly carefree song, the instrumentation sure is busy. The hi-hat ticks in anticipation of what’s sure to be a big night. Drum fills peek in every other measure. At one point I counted at least three different melodic motifs! And then, halfway through my third listen, the song clicked: there’s a fundamental disconnect between the aimlessness of the lyrics and the urgency of the music, the power in Dallas Smith’s voice even as he protests in the chorus that he doesn’t give a damn. Thing is, anybody who has to explain their indifference has already given themselves away. This is a compelling dynamic to build a song around, and it stands in for many of my own memories and mistakes: that night we all went drinking the week before we all left for college, that dinner where I bit my tongue in polite company, if only to protect it; the countless circling conversations in study hall about who we were and weren’t and wanted to be. “Wastin’ Gas” still ends up feeling a little disposable, like a beer-stained red Solo cup crushed on the sidewalk, but I’m glad those cups are still being made.
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