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Review: Butch Walker – Stay Gold

Butch Walker - Stay Gold
Craig Manning

“I don’t know what to write about after this record. I’m saying it all. The well is tapped. Maybe no more albums after this one.”

Butch Walker tweeted those words in January of this year, stoking rumors that his then-still-untitled 2016 album might be his last. I don’t expect Walker to follow through with this particular threat. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from almost 12 years of holding Butch to be my favorite artist, it’s that the guy has an incredible, incessant love for music. He’s the kind of guy who would retire and then be antsy to get back into the studio after a month. If Stay Gold does end up being the last Butch Walker album, though, then it’s sure as shit the right kind of album to go out with. 2016 has been a dark year in a lot of ways, and just reading through the headlines these days is enough to make even the most sensible person want to stick their head in the sand. But Stay Gold is all brash guitars and sunny optimism, a quintessential summer record that stands as this year’s most celebratory work. Rarely has Butch’s love for music, lyrics, stories, and guitar solos been on such gleeful display. Frankly, this is the kind of life-affirming album we need right now. At least, it’s the one I needed.

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Review: Boys Like Girls – Boys Like Girls

Boys Like Girls
Craig Manning

10 years ago, it didn’t seem like Boys Like Girls were going to be a band anyone cared about a decade after the fact. Skyrocketed to success by Purevolume and Myspace, Boys Like Girls seemed inextricably tied to the mid-2000s even when they were just getting started. You need only look at some of the bands Boys Like Girls toured with in those early days (Cute is What We Aim For, Hit the Lights, A Thorn for Every Heart) to get a sense for what could have happened to BLG 10 years after the arrival of their debut record. Essentially, they’d have a handful of fans but not a ton of respect or clout, and they’d be cashing in on nostalgia more than pushing things forward in their music careers. Or they wouldn’t exist in any form. One of the two.

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Review: Emarosa – 131

Emarosa - 131
Drew Beringer

“Nothing ever happens until it happens to you” bellows Bradley Walden on “Miracle,” the second single off 131, the newest release from his band Emarosa. It’s an exhilarating moment on one of the album’s most electrifying tracks. It can also be interpreted as the main thesis behind 131 – professionally (Emarosa) and personally (Walden). 131 is the second album to feature Walden as the band’s lead vocalist after original vocalist Jonny Craig was kicked out for a myriad of reasons. It was a fight or flight moment for the band and they struck gold when they tapped Walden to handle vocal duties, and the band’s third LP, Versus, followed soon after. That record was a very respectable release but you can hear that both the band and Walden were still in that adjustment period stage and trying to feel each other out. Versus was the beginning of the band’s shift away from post-hardcore into more of a fluid pop-influence, but without losing any of their aggressiveness. And 131 is the fully realized version of that sound — Walden and company have grown together to create one of the most powerful and honest albums of year.

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Interview: The Hotelier

The Hotelier
Zac Djamoos

Two months ago, The Hotelier released their third album, Goodness. It touches on themes of Taoism and acceptance and it’s been something I’ve connected with a good deal during the end of my senior year of high school. Last week, on the tour to celebrate the release of the album, I had the opportunity to speak with the group’s lead singer/bassist/lyricist, Christian Holden. We discussed the writing process of Goodness, the band’s first music video(s), and anarchist theory.

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Review: Blink-182 – California

Blink 182 - California
Drew Beringer

What’s left to write about Blink-182? There’s no point to rehash the drama that Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker have with Tom DeLonge, nor is there any point to harp on the incredibly bizarre interviews and statements DeLonge has given the press lately. We’ve all ranked their discography a hundred different ways and chosen sides. I guess all we can really do now is talk about the music, right? It’s a development that I (and many others) will welcome. And, when we talk about the music, we’ll find that band’s seventh full length album, California, is probably the most classic Blink release since 2001’s double-platinum Take Off Your Pants and Jacket.

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Review: Relient K – Air for Free

Relient K - Air for Free
Jason Tate

This first impression was originally posted as a live blog for supporters in our forums on July 13th, 2017. First impressions are meant to be quick, fun, initial impressions on an album or release as I listen to it for the first time. It’s a running commentary written while listening to an album — not a review. More like a diary of thoughts. This post has been lightly edited for structure and flow.

I’ve been listening to Relient K since I was going through my christian music phase in early, early high-school. It was the period of my life when I was doing the whole Young Life thing. That is all a story for another time, but, through it I did discover some music that I’ve enjoyed ever since. MxPx. Slick Shoes. Dogwood. Value Pac. These are bands I’ve been listening to for a looooong time now .. and Relient K were one of the bands that drew me in almost immediately. The pop hooks. The fun, tongue in cheek lyrics, and their ear for harmony. The band’s changed some over the years, they’ve moved more toward the secular crowd, they saw some mainstream popularity for a little while, and overall they’ve always been a band I’ve kept an eye on. I think Matt T has one of the best ears for pop music out there and is arguably one of the better songwriters in our little scene. He’s that good. I have even found a way to like some parts of Collapsable Lung a little after a few years, although, that’s easily my least favorite from the band.

The new album is Air for Free. It’ll be streaming on Pandora this Friday. It’s 16 tracks long. So, it’s a beast of an album. But my first impression is that they went for it. Matt H described it to me as: “the opposite of our attempt at radio (Collapsible Lung) and we just tried to be ourselves and have fun with it” — and I think in a lot of ways that’s a great way to describe it. It’s fun. It’s different in the right ways.

Ok, so here we go …

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Review: Sarah Jarosz – Undercurrent

Craig Manning

Texas Americana artist Sarah Jarosz is only 25 years old—and recently 25, to boot—but she already has four albums under her belt. Her third, 2013’s Build Me up from Bones, even earned a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. It’s with her fourth album, the brand-new Undercurrent, that Jarosz is making a case for herself as one of the finest artists in the genre. On the last album I’d have argued that the best song was a cover of Bob Dylan’s timeless “Simple Twist of Fate”—already one of the best songs Dylan ever wrote. Here, all 11 songs are originals, and they showcase new depths of confidence for Jarosz. Even when she’s working with co-writers, everything on Undercurrent feels bent to the same artistic vision.

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The Best Albums of 2016 (So Far)

Best of 2016
Jason Tate

As we pass the midway mark of 2016, it’s nice to sit back and reflect on the great albums that have come out so far this year. Below you’ll find a compiled list that looks at the selected albums from contributors and moderators to this website, as well as all of the broken down individual lists. Maybe there will be some albums you’ve heard of, hopefully there will be quite a few you haven’t checked out yet, and maybe there will be a few you’ll want to give a second look. I think it’s been a pretty damn good year for music so far and there’s quite a bit to still look forward to as well.

There’s a thread in our music forum where we’d love to see your lists.

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Interview: Sam Means (ex-The Format)

Sam Means
Craig Ismaili

Late last week, I had a chance to sit down for an extensive phone conversation with the wonderful Sam Means. Back in January, Sam released his debut full-length solo record Ten Songs, a record I have connected with a lot during these long, hot summer days in the Northeast. We discuss that record pretty thoroughly before delving into a number of other topics, including why Dog Problems has remained relevant even ten years later and why he feels a The Format reunion is “inevitable,” even if it’s not imminent.

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Review: Dashboard Confessional – Dusk and Summer

Dashboard Confessional - Dusk and Summer
Craig Manning

Dusk and Summer is my favorite Dashboard Confessional album. How’s that for a contrarian statement? For most fans of Dashboard, Dusk tends to occupy the lower rungs of discography rankings—if not the very bottom slot. There are obvious reasons for this lowly reputation, and they happen to correspond with the various groups of Chris Carrabba fans that exist out in the wild. The first group of fans is the “there from the beginning” group. These people were listening when Carrabba first arrived on the scene and released The Swiss Army Romance (2000) and The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most (2001). Fans in this group are incredibly attached to the stripped-down acoustic arrangements and heart-on-the-sleeve angst of those first two records. They cite Swiss Army and Places as foundational albums in the emo and pop-punk movements, label them as classics, and point to Carrabba going full-band (on 2003’s A Mark, A Mission, a Brand, a Scar) as the moment where everything went to hell.

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