Crime In Stereo – I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone

On their new album, Crime In Stereo continue to build on 2007′s Is Dead by further departing from the Long Island melodic hardcore template their earlier work was inspired by. If Is Dead defined the band’s sound, I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone embraces that definition, while still challenging it and refining it further. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any fans of the last album being disappointed by this one, and yet the band is giving us something we haven’t heard before, not content to play it safe and rewrite the same songs over and over. The biggest change from Is Dead is that while still sonically experimental, the songs are more energetic and concise overall, perhaps deliberately more suited for live performance. The resulting sound defies traditional genre definitions, falling somewhere between Polar Bear Club and an infinitely more listenable version of Brand New‘s 2009 album Daisy. Describing it is frustrating, but listening to it is awesome.

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Alkaline Trio – This Addiction

At this point in their career, I’m pretty sure that Alkaline Trio wouldn’t be able to record a bad album if they wanted to. Their seventh proper full-length, This Addiction isn’t their best or their worst to date, but it is a solid album. They largely play to their strengths here, mostly ditching the keyboards and electronic sounds that sounded somewhat out of place on 2005′s Crimson, with the exception of the utterly synthtastic rocked out anthem “Eating Me Alive.” The more commercial pop sensibilities that they embraced so wholeheartedly on 2007′s sugary Agony & Irony are also kept in check here, favoring instead the simultaneously sunny and brooding brand of pop-punk of their earlier work. Matt Skiba’s vocal range is somewhat narrower than it was 10 years ago, the songs aren’t quite as fast or energetic as their back catalogue, and there are occasional missteps (the trumpet solo on “Lead Poisoning” comes to mind), but there are moments of pure magic too. This Addiction is absolutely worth a listen.

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The Felix Culpa – Sever Your Roots

To label The Felix Culpa as “post-hardcore” seems like somewhat of a copout, but “post-post-hardcore” just sounds pretentious. Whatever you want to call them, their sophomore album Sever Your Roots is a masterpiece. It is a sprawling epic with everything I love about rock music thrown in: parts you can scream your lungs out to, moody interludes to steady your heart rate again, off-kilter beats that are mathy without being self-indulgent, huge guitar riffs that you can rock out to, and soaring melodies that stick with you long after the song has ended. There aren’t many albums these days that manage to hold my attention from start to finish, but this one is 66 minutes long and I still have it playing on repeat. It’s sometimes hard to be a prog nerd in a world that can only stomach 3-minute singles, but music like this makes me want to hold my head up high and stand proudly behind the music that I love. Sever Your Roots is essentially unclassifiable, but I would recommend it for fans of Tides of Man, The Mars Volta, and The Sound of Animals Fighting. Or anyone, really. It’s so good.

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The Album Leaf – A Chorus Of Storytellers

The atmospheric textures on A Chorus of Storytellers could easily be the soundtrack to a bleary, gray sky. The Album Leaf is a band who has always written moods more than songs, and this collection of compositions, mixed by Birgir Jon Birgisson of Sigur Ros, is nothing if not moody. But what Jimmy LaValle and company show us here, is that great music can exist without sunshine. Most of the songs have little or no vocals, and many of the instrumental sections would probably be considered too down-tempo to even make it onto a Death Cab For Cutie record, but the arrangements are gorgeous and the music is beautiful, not a single note out of place. Recording here for the first time as a full band, as opposed to project mastermind Jimmy LaValle playing all of the instruments himself, the resulting sound is more cohesive than ever before. Not necessarily recommended for a noisy subway commute, but perfect for a lazy weekend when it’s too cold to go outside.

Paramore – Brand New Eyes

The sugary sweetness of Paramore’s punk-infused pop/rock will easily rot your teeth if you let it, but at the end of the day, isn’t it worth it?  It’s only your teeth we’re talking about here.  You can always get new ones.  This time around, the Franklin, Tennessee quintet have upped the ante with tighter songwriting, boundless energy, and slightly more mature arrangements, a little more Jimmy Eat World and a little less New Found Glory.  One of the major highlights is front woman Hayley Williams, who at the ripe old age of 20, is really coming into her own as a vocalist.  The album is full of her trademark soaring melodies and amped-up choruses, but she is also learning to balance the bouncy hooks with a more restrained approach on the occasional ballad as well.  Brand New Eyes doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, but it certainly gives Paramore fans more of what they want: a collection of catchy rock songs that may or may not warrant a trip to the dentist.  It’s like sonic candy corn.

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Muse – The Resistance

Muse is a band that knows their drama.  Whether they are channeling mid-90s Radiohead (“Unnatural Selection”), late-80s Depeche Mode (“Uprising”), or even mid-70s Queen (“United States of Eurasia”), they pack a theatrical punch into every song on their fifth album, The Resistance.  Pounding drums and synthesizer flourishes support lead singer Matt Bellamy’s grandiose vibrato, which is as melodramatic as ever throughout.  The album is truly an exercise in genre-mashing, the band embracing their collective attention deficit disorder with gusto.  The grand finale is the epic “Exogenesis Symphony,” which integrates a full orchestra with the standard rock band lineup to create a 12-minute, three-movement masterpiece.  Flowing seamlessly from tremolo string arrangements to ambient electronica to piano sonatas to bombastic prog rock, back and forth and everywhere in between, the final three tracks define the music I have been waiting for Muse to make for years.  I can only hope they continue to mine the depths of such experimentation in the future.

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Strung Out – Agents of the Underground

15 years since the release of their first album, California skate-punks Strung Out are still going strong.  The technical metal elements that were first prominently featured on 2000′s Element of Sonic Defiance continue to define the band’s sound, distancing them from most of their label mates on Fat Wreck Chords.  There are plenty of moments of fierce metallic aggression, such as the feral screaming on the title track, which sounds like lead singer Jason Cruz‘s lungs are being turned inside out.  Still, it’s when the band shows their melodic side, even throwing in some (gasp) major-key choruses, that they really shine.  Halfway through the disc, “Ghetto Healer” is a perfect blend of old and new, with dive-bomb guitar squeals and pummeling double-time drumming pitted against accessible melodic hooks in the chorus.  Closer “Andy Warhol” is the requisite Strung Out anthem, sure to have you singing along and starting your own personal moshpit while you rock out to your iPod on the subway.  Successfully blending punk and metal without watering either genre down can be tricky business, but after 15 years, Strung Out have it down to a science.

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Poison The Well – The Tropic Rot

Poison the Well create the music nightmares are made of.  After pretty much defining the metalcore genre with their early releases, they have now largely abandoned the crushing riffs and brutally heavy breakdowns of their first couple albums, in favor of twisted mood pieces with angular melodies that slowly snake their way around the discordant harmonies of jangly guitars.  The screaming is still intense, but it’s less relentless than on their earlier work.  Instead, vocalist Jeffrey Moreira’s approach is closer to that of Mike Patton, exploring his full range of pitchless shouts, yelps, and screams.  The lyrics are often disturbing too, adding to the strange tonalities and eerie harmonies to create a feeling of general unease.  In “Pamplemousse,” Moreira sings, “Look in your hair, young love / I’ve left you a present you will not find unless you look / I have left a part of me there / don’t be surprised when I end up never leaving again / because of so many pieces of myself I’ve hidden on you / when we say goodbye / one day we won’t say goodbye.”  Creepy stuff.  If you’re looking for a way to scare the trick-or-treaters this year, don’t bother with jack-o-lanterns and cardboard ghosts.  Just pick up a copy of The Tropic Rot.

Vocalist Tilian Pearson’s impossibly high tenor is reminiscent of Anthony Green, though his voice has more in common with Green’s early days in Saosin than his later work with Circa Survive, opting for lung-shredding screams almost as often as his water-clear falsetto.  Above all, he packs much more intensity into his singing than one comes to expect with the genre, which should help extend the band’s appeal beyond the usual fans of Coheed and Cambria and The Mars Volta, to the casual Warped Tour crowd as well.  Anyone interested in sampling Pearson’s full range should download “Western Scene,” a mind-boggling gem buried ¾ of the way through the album.  The song has a variety of dynamic sections crammed in to showcase Pearson’s voice, including a single softly-floating vocal melody, multi-tracked soaring harmonies, smooth octave doubling, raw screaming, and everywhere in between.

Still the biggest highlight of the album would have to be the second track, “Create Couldn’t Keep Up.”  The band’s three-guitar lineup carries the song, shifting back and forth between a lush orchestral ambience and a huge post-hardcore assault that underlies a distorted vocal melody about halfway through the song.  Finally at about five and a half minutes, the vocals cut out and are replaced by a discordant eastern-scale guitar solo, after which the band starts to build beneath stop/start harmonized guitar arpeggios.  The final climax comes at about seven minutes, with the conclusion of the second epic guitar solo.  I count myself as someone who can rarely stomach a guitar solo, but this song’s build is so organic, and the arrangement is so perfect, that the guitar shredding heroics that ensue feel necessary rather than forced.

Elsewhere the album is balanced by contrasting dynamics, such as in the haunting title track with its shimmering spookiness, and in the acoustic guitar-laden “Descent,” which feels somewhat like a demented waltz in 5/8.  Most importantly, throughout the many moods created here, all the songs themselves are concise, most of them clocking in under five minutes.  Though it’s true that five minutes might well test the attention span of someone used to pop radio singles, I assure you that for progressive rock, that’s brevity.  And while the musicianship is substantial, the playing is never showy or needlessly complex.  Indeed, for a band with such considerable chops, they show remarkable restraint and maturity for their debut album.  The rhythm section is consistently rock solid, and the focus of the guitars is much more on tasteful atmospherics than blistering lead lines.

As someone who is constantly discovering bands just after they have broken up, it is refreshing to come across a fresh group of musicians who are just now finding their sound.  And if they keep making music like this, I am confident that Tides of Man will not be opening for bands like Dance Gavin Dance much longer.  Indeed, if there is any justice in the music world, they will soon be headlining at Terminal 5 and Dance Gavin Dance will be opening for a local classic rock combo at Don Hill’s.  But enough about how much I hate Dance Gavin Dance and Don Hill’s (such a gross place) – Tides of Man are a really great band, and Empire Theory is an awesome album that deserves your attention.  If you’re like me, go buy it and have your often-shaken faith in rock music once again restored.

Sylvie – Trees and Shade are Our Only Fences

I’m not sure where Saskatchewan’s Sylvie have been all my life, but I’m pretty psyched to have finally discovered them. Sort of like a grumpier version of Minus The Bear, fronted by a raspier version of Michael Stipe, Sylvie tie the whole thing together with pretty boy-girl vocal harmonies reminiscent of the songs Rachel Haden sang with Jimmy Eat World. Indeed, the band’s new album Trees and Shade are Our Only Fences might remind you of ten of your favorite bands, but it will never strike you as derivative. Plus, we could probably all use a little more Saskatchewan in our lives. If you’re still not sold, start by downloading the American Football-esque “Breakout for Summer” and I promise you’ll be hooked.

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Killswitch Engage – Killswitch Engage

Balancing epic choruses with visceral screaming over crushing guitar riffs, has always been at the heart of Killswitch Engage‘s mission of making metalcore accessible to more than just metalheads. The songs are a little shorter this time around, and there is slightly more emphasis on melody, but for the most part, those who are familiar with the formula will know what they’re signing on for with their new self-titled album. The vocals are pitch-perfect, the drumming is ultra-precise, and the guitar leads are layered as thick as an orchestra. I wish they had continued to build on some of the mathier riffs from 2006′s As Daylight Dies, and I wish there were more counterpoint vocal melodies from guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz, but in the end there’s very little to complain about here. Killswitch Engage know what they’re doing, and this will be a welcome addition to their catalogue.

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Dredg – The Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion

Dredg have covered a lot of musical ground since their 2001 debut Leitmotif, and their fourth release follows that growth into new, unexpected directions. The 18 tracks that make up The Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion range from 30-second sketches that sound like Danny Elfman soundtracks, to 6-minute power ballads. As a whole, the album is a little less rock and a little more R&B than their previous work, and some of the gambles pay off more than others. Luckily, vocalist Gavin Hayes’ soaring voice is as passionate as ever, and the band can still pack a punch when they want to. Based on a concept inspired partly by a Salman Rushdie essay, this is definitely an album of substance, and it might take a little more effort to grasp, but it also rewards multiple listens.

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A Skylit Drive – Adelphia

I think guilty pleasures are as important in music as they are in anything else. You can’t eat candy for breakfast every day, but there’s nothing wrong with reading the occasional young adult vampire novel, or catching Gilmore Girls reruns on the Soap Opera Network every now and then. This is where meticulously-styled screamo cuties A Skylit Drive come in. Pretty haircuts aside, the bass player’s screaming conjures the image of cookie monster clearing his throat, while lead vocalist Michael “Jag” Jagmin’s pitch-corrected singing is somewhere between Geddy Lee and an oxygen-deprived chipmunk. Still, the guitars and drums are sequenced with laser precision, the breakdowns rock, and the songs (although laden with high school drama) are incredibly catchy. So if you had a salad for lunch and feel like you could afford to do something bad, check out Adelphia. It’s pretty sweet.

The evolution of Cave In’s sound has had its fair share of detours.  They started out as a math/metalcore band, pretty much defining the genre with their first full-length, Until Your Heart Stops, in 1999.  It would have been impossible to predict that the band would end up going on to play fairly straight-forward alternative rock (on a major label no less!) with 2003′s Antenna.  Personally, I find Until Your Heart Stops a little too gut-wrenchingly brutal for my tastes, while its polar opposite Antenna is almost disposable in its radio-friendliness.  Somewhere between these two extremes lies Jupiter, which finds the band at their creative peak, veering far off the course set by their previous work to create an unexpectedly brilliant album of space-rock classics.  With Jupiter, Cave In shows us that although there is something to be said for making an album that defines a genre, it is a greater achievement still to defy genres altogether.

Gone are the visceral screams and punishing rhythms reminiscent of Dillinger Escape Plan.  Instead, Jupiter showcases vocalist Stephen Brodsky’s dreamy croon, floating somewhere between shimmering, psychedelic washes of guitar and a thundering but precise rhythm section.  Sonically, the end result is perhaps a post-hardcore take on Radiohead, pitting huge, wall of sound production techniques and guitar-as-orchestra arrangements, against meticulous and nuanced songwriting.  The chorus of “In The Stream of Commerce” is haunting, creating the feeling of floating in the clouds, while somehow also sounding as if the guitar echoes are coming from underwater.  Elsewhere, “Requiem” flies through countless ideas in various styles, while still managing to feel somewhat brief at nine minutes.  All this suggests a band who is confident and deliberate in their execution of a sound they have been developing for the span of their careers, rather than a band who has taken a dramatic 180-degree turn from their debut only a year earlier.

Although all eight tracks are essential, the biggest highlight is definitely “Big Riff,” a seven-minute composition of stunning artistry.  If there was ever just one song that the fans would never let the band get away with cutting from their set list for even a single show, it’s this one.  Though it has the distinction of being the only song from Jupiter to feature any of the hardcore screaming that dominated the previous record, “Big Riff” is also balanced out by some of the most delicate and stirring falsetto heard on the album.  The dynamics are perfectly orchestrated and the vocal delivery is absolutely sincere, making both extremes truly poignant.  The guitars shift seamlessly throughout, back and forth between a crushing behemoth and angelic whispers, and everywhere in between.  Finally, the song’s epic finish finds various layers from earlier sections finally coming together in a powerful catharsis.

When I saw Cave In a couple years ago, touring to promote their last album, Perfect Pitch Black, it was kind of an odd experience.  They seemed to be rebelling against the mainstream accessibility of Antenna by ditching the straightforward song structures and incorporating more elements of their early work.  It was somewhat disappointing to only hear three songs from Jupiter, but it was very interesting to see where their sound had finally ended up, and to take in the bizarre mix of fans who came out to see them.  The band is currently on hiatus, its various members spending their time with other projects.  It is impossible to say what the next chapter in Cave In’s history might sound like, which probably could have been said at any point during their career, and anyway, I think they prefer to keep us guessing.  Regardless, I’m just glad that despite their ups and downs, we have at least one true masterpiece to show for it.

I should state as a disclaimer that I am not an especially huge fan of Say Anything.  Max Bemis has an incredible voice, but stylistically their music is all over the map, and I find that they sometimes lack focus.  Meanwhile, I loved the first couple Saves The Day albums, but as the original members left and it became the Chris Conley show, I sort of lost interest.  That said, both songwriters are powerful creative forces, and I have been looking forward to this album since rumors first began circulating about it, especially after hearing both of the singers’ guest spots on Forgive Durden‘s rock opera Razia’s Shadow last year.  This collaboration between them strikes a perfect balance between their contrasting styles.  It could be that one censors the other and weeds out the less brilliant ideas, or maybe one inspires the other and forces him to evaluate his own writing on a completely different level; I’m not sure.  However the writing process might have played out, the end result rocks.

The two singers could not have more different voices, and on paper it might seem like an odd collaboration.  Although they have similar ranges and limits as far as pitch, Conley’s approach is smooth and nasal, while Bemis’ is forceful and throaty.  Conley sometimes sacrifices intelligibility for sweetness, while Bemis pours emotion into every phrase he sings, as if the words coming out of his mouth might be his last.  Admittedly, their voices lend themselves better to call-and-response than straight up harmonies, but they realize this and play to their strengths throughout the album.  The opening track “Crawl” is a perfect example, with Bemis sucking in huge breaths before emptying his lungs to belt out the verses, alternating with Conley’s nasal delivery and cool pitch bends in the chorus.  The bridge then features an angelic wash of lush vocal harmonies that only Conley could pull off, followed by Bemis’ angsty growl, which then becomes a perfect counterpoint to Conley’s melody in the final chorus.

The balance between the two singers is maintained carefully throughout, whether they are trading off lines, verses, or even entire songs.  Lyrically, they explore several different dynamics within that balance, sometimes as two characters singing to each other, and other times giving two different voices to the same narrator.  In “Back Against The Wall” they are lovers in a doomed relationship, and in “Silly Game” Conley tries to be a source of comfort while Bemis can only focus on being deserted by another girl.  In “Wowee Zowee” Conley is a concerned friend, calling Bemis back from the brink, trying to relieve his insecurities and reassure him that everything is going to be OK.  This song in particular might be somewhat autobiographical, since Say Anything had to cancel a tour with Saves The Day when Bemis was admitted to a mental hospital in 2005, suffering a breakdown after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  Fortunately he has not had an episode since, and the two bands eventually made up for the tour in 2007.

Lyrical inspiration aside, Two Tongues is an exciting project from two of pop-punk’s most visionary songwriters.  It showcases both singers doing what they do best, their contrasting styles complimenting each other perfectly.  Most importantly, the album never feels like a mix of two solo projects, and while one’s voice could never be confused for the other, they are two distinct elements that contribute to one cohesive sound.  For now, Conley is working on the third part in Saves The Day’s three-album concept which started with 2006′s Sound The Alarm, and Bemis will likely continue to hatch such crazy ideas as the Max Bemis Song Shop, through which he will compose a song based on your short writing for $150.  Although I admittedly don’t have much interest in either of their current bands these days, Two Tongues manages to be a great album full of songs that will likely be at the top of my playlist for some time.

Thursday’s back catalogue has established them as one of the most well-read bands of their genre, and the lyrical depth here is no exception.  They contribute the first half of the album, an ambitious four-song cycle whose titles combine to make the sentence “As He Climbed The Dark Mountain / In Silence / An Absurd Dream Of Peace / Appeared And Was Gone,” and the songs themselves seem to play out a single narrative.  The frantic energy of the first track will immediately appease fans who thought 2006′s A City By The Light Divided lacked urgency, or felt too artsy.  The band sounds more confident than ever, seamlessly incorporating the electronic experimentation from their last album with the emotional intensity they first made their name with.  At the same time, the delicate construction of the song, itself a miniature epic in just three minutes, should provide enough sustenance for anyone who thought 2003′s War All The Time felt rushed or monochromatic.

The alternating sing/scream dynamic that the band made famous on 2001′s Full Collapse is featured heavily on two of Thursday’s four songs, with vocalist Geoff Rickly sounding well-rested and ready to do battle.  His vocal delivery is spot-on, while the production is polished but never overworked.  The other two tracks, surprisingly, are instrumentals, in which the band explore new sonic territory.  “In Silence” is absolutely epic: beautiful and yet brutal, like if Sigur Rós grew tired of playing pretty music and decided instead to crush their audience with walls of distortion.  “Appeared And Was Gone” is actually a more atmospheric remix of the same song, but it stands well on its own, and is especially appropriate as a bookend wrapping up the first half of the split and segueing into Envy’s side.

It is also fitting that Envy close out the album, the focus of their three tracks being more on the ultimate release that follows a slow build than the immediate payoff that Thursday delivers.  The sprawling opener “An Umbrella Fallen Into Fiction” is one such gradual climb, featuring tasteful marimbas and spoken word interludes over reverb-drenched guitar arpeggios and sparse electronic percussion for the first four minutes or so.  An orchestral wash of distorted guitars eventually kicks in over pounding drums, along with Envy’s trademark visceral screams, creating a huge climax.  One of the most unique things about Envy’s sound is the way they create such a dense and epic atmosphere of distortion, while playing at a breakneck pace.  Bands like Isis and Hum have always succeeded at building similar sonic soundscapes out of lumbering beats and walls of guitars that plod along at lazy tempos, but Envy manage it without sacrificing energy or intensity.

This split is definitely a big step for Thursday, who could have gone in any number of directions after leaving a major label.  It is refreshing to see that they are not merely “getting back to their roots” – they are refining and fine-tuning all of the various elements that have contributed to their sound over the years, embracing their eclectic influences without abandoning any of them.  At the same time, this album will probably introduce Envy to a whole new audience that they have not yet tapped into over their 16 years together.  I have always been intrigued by the format of the split CD, and I have seen a few where the combination of two bands felt a little forced, so it is nice to see how well it can work when the two contributors’ sounds compliment each other so well.  Thursday’s upcoming full-length Common Existence is due to be released early next year, and the expectations will definitely be high after this release.  You can’t please everyone, but my only hope is that they continue to build on what they have created here.

Indeed, despite the inherent weight of the subject matter, there is a distinctly sunny, west coast vibe to most, if not all of the 14 tracks here.  Along with the unavoidable melodrama that accompanies tinkling major-key piano arpeggios, is an underlying current of optimism and hope.  There is a delicate balance between the emotional vulnerability of what is a very private and profound redemption, and more universal themes that make up the lyrical content of some of the catchier choruses.  “I’m alive, but I don’t need a witness to know that I survived,” McMahon sings on “The Resolution.”  Rather than dwell on past experience and harp on his own personal battles, he looks beyond himself to try and catch a glimpse of the big picture, transforming his songs into a celebration of life.

All of this could easily be trite and hammy if not approached very delicately.  Luckily McMahon knows what people want to hear, and his knack for composing infectious pop hooks is highlighted here by impeccable arrangements.  The double-time chorus of “Bloodshot,” like much of the album, demands to be cranked up on your stereo, so that the majestic synthesizers and multi-tracked vocals can properly wash over you and truly achieve catharsis.  When some bands employ predictable chord progressions, it can grate on your nerves for their lack of ideas and imagination.  But when Jack’s Mannequin pulls out the very same bag of tricks, the technique is executed so flawlessly that the familiarity is comforting instead of tired, speaking an innate language that you don’t realize you speak until it’s been conveyed so perfectly and you find yourself singing along.

Though it is probably heresy to suggest this to diehard fans of the band, I feel like the weakest part of the album is probably the vocals.  Everything is certainly well-written, while the tasteful orchestrations and production always serve the songs, but McMahon’s singing is sometimes overworked.  When the choruses kick in and his voice is doubled, soaring over the band rocking out at full volume, he sounds great.  But when the arrangements are stripped down for a more hushed dynamic, the songs beg for restraint in the vocals, which he only manages about half the time.  That said, when the vocal delivery is spot on, his voice is absolutely capable of carrying the song – case and point, “Drop Out – The So Unknown,” one of the standout tracks about halfway through.

I feel like The Glass Passenger is the kind of album that could potentially be the soundtrack to your life, but you would have to completely give yourself to it first.  It’s up to you, really; if you can recognize that a Bruce Hornsby-influenced piano interlude could possibly have its place in a song, and the song could still be great (as is the case with the opener “Crashin’”), then this could be the album for you.  It’s true, it took me a little while to get to that point, but I think the journey was worth it.  I will admit that my wife makes fun of me for listening to Jack’s Mannequin, but not nearly as much as she does when I put on show tunes, so you can reach your own conclusions.  My advice is to not bother apologizing to yourself and just embrace some unabashedly sensitive piano rock, because sometimes it’s cool to be so decidedly uncool.