Oct 10, 2008
New Surrender
| So I said I'd do an album review for the new Anberlin CD. Especially considering how giddy I was to get it and my autographed vinyl too. But I can't say it doesn't disappoint. I come from the school of needing to change your style at least a little over the course of a musical career to give a little credibility to your musical range. Unfortunately, their range just went extremely hipster. This is like the last Lost Prophets album. You can still tell exactly how good they are, it just feels like they were being pushed into that direction by someone behind the scenes and it wasn't genuine band-rocking-outing. Though I won't bash the album nor the band. I think they've taken a step closer to pop than towards rock, which attracted me to them in the first place. They seemed to have a great balance going on there. They have their lyrical brilliance and their musical brilliance. Most of the album, the two are broken up from track to track, but there are songs where it all comes together and I can't help but close my eyes and shake my head and think THIS is what they're supposed to sound like. There do seem to be a few throw away tracks, which I didn't feel they had in their last full length studio album Cities so I am a little disappointed in the direction that they chose to take musically. The rock roots still seep through on tracks like The Resistance and Feel Good Drag. Which, strangely enough, Drag is their first single, but it is a remake, of their own song off a previous album. So I'm not sure if I should be patting them on the back for being able to make it marketable now that people know who they are, or to hate them for repackaging old music into this album. But then again, Lost Songs was nothing more than re-recordings and acoustic versions... All this aside, I can still take a step back and look it over and say, "God dammit they still do this pop/rock juggling act better than anyone else could." 7.5/10 Speak for yourself You paper tigers You crash where you stand You've got a riot on your hands |
posted by Mike at 1:38 PM
