Farewell - Isn’t This Supposed To Be Fun?
Being released by Epitaph this month. Synths. Sugary sweet melodies. Powerchord power pop. Soaring chorus. Lyrics about robots. Motion City Soundtrack? No its Farewell and given the previous short 6 sentances they’ll suffer. Because ultimately, although this album is an entirely different prospect to the latest MCS LP, it will inevitably be lumped alongside them.
Tracks like “Eighty Eight” sound like The Appreciation Post, all smart sass and a moog hook that doesn’t just get inside your head, but grates the brain for days. Even my collegues have started humming it, and they haven’t even heard the song. Sing Baby comes across like Warning era Green Day (Misery in particular) before gleefully pissing in the face of the “circus-pop” played by P!ATD. Opener Start It Up reminds me of TGUK, will a delicious positive sentiment, whilst First One On The Blog takes the Fall Out Boy blueprint (smart self knowing lyrics (about the internet as well), layered backing vocals, musically sounding like the Stereo) and makes it sound dirty, without the Mariah Carey vocal operatics.
Its varied then, but in some places becomes a bit forgettable - 13 tracks seems a little overlong, they could easily have cut away two or three tracks and been contenders for release of the year. Easily. Anchors Away for example adds nothing (except some admittidly interesting plucked strings in the background).
So, whilst it falls short of where it could have been (removing the two or three superfluous tracks and a dropped verse here or there) this album is already a firm favourite, referencing loads of my favourite bands but not copying any of them - you can’t pigeonhole this, and one or two tracks aside, this is fresh and different enough to be special. Its just a shame of the shadow the release has fallen under.
Filed by Kieran at September 15th, 2007 under Music