Review: Jimmy Eat World – Integrity Blues

Jason Tate Sep 6, 2016

This first impression was originally posted as a live blog for supporters in our forums on September 6th, 2016. 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.

It’s here.

It’s time.

I’m going to do a first listen thread for the upcoming Jimmy Eat World album, Integrity Blues. A couple of thoughts going in: I usually try and listen to an album three times or so before doing a first listen thread, so I kind of have an idea of what I wanna talk about on each song. But because it’s JEW, and because a lot of people have been waiting for this one, and because they’re my favorite band, I’m going to do this having only listened to the album once all the way through.

I’m clearly very bias with this band, they’re basically my favorite band ever, so you should know that as well going in … like, there’s no objective way I can listen to these guys, so I’m not going to even try.

My first over-arching impressions is that this album is very Futures-esque in a lot of ways. Layers, dark, big huge pop-rock. But it includes some Invented and CTL themes as well. I think that by and large this is what I love best from the band, and I think recording with JMJ was a fantastic choice. That big huge sound just works so well with this band and on these songs they really sound big, polished, and it’s almost a complete 180 from Damage in how it sounds.

As always, I reserve the right to change my mind at another time, and this isn’t really a “review” as much as it is me going through and listening to an album and just writing down my thoughts on it while it plays.

Review: Sianvar – Stay Lost

Zac Djamoos Aug 24, 2016

Knowing the members of Sianvar, the quality of their work should never have been up for debate. Featuring members of Dance Gavin Dance, A Lot Like Birds, Hail the Sun, and Stolas, the lineup is a veritable who’s-who of modern progressive rock. It was never a secret that Sianvar was made up of talented members, but I don’t know if anyone expected the group’s debut full-length to sound as good as it does. Stay Lost almost makes the members’ previous outings look like warm ups.

Review: Bayside – Vacancy

Becky Kovach Aug 23, 2016

One thing I’ve come to respect about Bayside is they’ve always known who they are. They’ve never felt the need to reinvent themselves, and they’ve spent the last 16 years working to perfect a sound that’s entirely their own.

The band’s latest effort, Vacancy, is no exception. It is a growling collection of songs that feels familiar on first listen, a true continuation in Bayside’s story and sound.

Review: Butch Walker – Stay Gold

Craig Manning Aug 16, 2016

“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

Craig Manning Aug 15, 2016

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.

Review: Emarosa – 131

Drew Beringer Aug 3, 2016

“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.

Review: Blink-182 – California

Drew Beringer Jul 18, 2016

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

Jason Tate Jul 13, 2016

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 Jul 12, 2016

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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Review: Dashboard Confessional – Dusk and Summer

Craig Manning Jun 27, 2016

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.

Review: Red Hot Chili Peppers – The Getaway

Craig Manning Jun 22, 2016

Sometimes with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it’s best to think of Anthony Kiedis and his vocal lines as just another instrument in the mix. There’s at least a little bit of evidence that the frontman views himself that way, too. As New York Times journalist Nate Chinen wrote in his review of the Peppers’ new album, The Getaway, Kiedis “writes lyrics with rhythmic cadence first and foremost, which means that there will always be bursts of babble.” RHCP have always been a band whose foundation is rhythm, from their early days as a funk band to their transition into more conventional alt-rock territory with 1999’s Californication. With a rhythm section as talented and dynamic as Flea and Chad Smith, it’s tough to blame Kiedis for wanting to write lyrics that allow for better beat and syncopation. The negative consequence to that impulse is that Kiedis is very frequently singing lyrics that, while they might mean something to him, don’t carry much weight for the average listener.

Review: Gates – Parallel Lives

Craig Ismaili Jun 21, 2016

My favorite moments in music are the ones that feel transcendent; the ones that seem to transport, envelop, and transform your circumstances as you sit down to experience them.

These moments can come in many forms. For many people, an exceptionally crafted heavy moment, like a climactic bridge or a breakdown in a metal song, can bring that world-changing experience. For others, it may come in the form of a delicate and spacious quiet song which allows the listener to drift off into restfulness or meditate.

One thing that drew me to the overlapping genres of post-rock, ambient, and post-hardcore music is that this sense of place, this tangible connection with the structure of a listening experience, and this focus on the audience’s interaction with the music, felt innately immersive to me. Listening to the songs by these artists, whether or not they were purely instrumental, allowed me to pour myself into the music, experience it fully, and it allowed the music to pour itself into me.

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Review: Butch Walker – Stay Gold

Jason Tate Jun 18, 2016

This first impression was originally posted as a live blog for supporters in our forums on June 18th, 2016. 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.

Hey, only basically a day late on this! But, here I am! Today was a day of trying to catch up on a lot of work and then I like to spend a day every few weeks trying to do something I dedicated to learning and education — so today was also spent going through my to watch queue and only watching the educational videos I have saved up (I use the “add to Plex” bookmarklet to save videos and things like that to my Plex library to then watch on the TV, it’s a great little tool that I definitely recommend). Overall, not a bad day at all.

Tonight I’m going to do some blogging/writing about the new album from Butch Walker. The album is called Stay Gold, and it will be out on August 26th.

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Review: Vinnie Caruana – Survivor’s Guilt

Becky Kovach Jun 14, 2016

Vinnie Caruana is perhaps best known as the front man for The Movielife and I Am The Avalanche; however, over the past several years he has steadily been making a name for himself as a solo artist . This spring Caruana released his debut full length, Survivor’s Guilt. What makes Survivor’s Guilt so memorable is the unrelenting passion Caruana imparts into each note. His recognizably gruff vocals, the meandering melodies, the stories he shares – each contributes to an album that drives home the darker themes of life and loss while maintaining hope for the future.

Review: Maren Morris – Hero

Craig Manning Jun 6, 2016

Often, country music is easy for the masses to ignore. Artists like Miranda Lambert and Eric Church are legitimately huge, but their appeal rests pretty squarely in the “Nashville” part of the radio dial. Every once in awhile, someone like Taylor Swift or Chris Stapleton comes along, lights the world on fire, and demands to be heard by everyone. For the most part, though, the people who claim to listen to “anything but country” can carry on without having to have their beliefs challenged by someone who is too big—and too fucking good—to ignore. I don’t know if Maren Morris is the next Taylor Swift or Chris Stapleton, but let me just say this: you aren’t going to want to sleep on Hero, Morris’s full-length debut.