onelinedrawing : "RAINBOWMACHINE"

 

When it comes to Jonah Matranga, I am still hung up on Far. When he puts out other music, I listen for the parts that sound like Far and gravitate toward them. Is this fair? No, but life is not fair, and he raised the bar for himself so high with that band. I have not given anything else as much of a chance, though this album touches on a great deal of what I loved about Far, but with some of the nu-metal-leaning elements dialed way down. This also brings up a fair argument about why Far was not a bigger band. It is because they were too emo for the nu-metal kids and too nu-metal for the hipster emo kids. But now is the perfect time for a reunion; they need the kind of posthumous TikTok fame Type O Negative and Acid Bath got. 

There is a bit of pop-punk and 80- radio rock in the first few songs. The opening track could have been on the new Menzingers album. It is fitting that "80s El Camino" plugged into the vibes of the days he is singing about, with a Joan Jett feel to the riff. The Far moments don't start coming till "Failures Virgin" and "inbetweener,"  which are not him trying to recapture the past, but it organically comes out since that is a part of him. There is more of a folk rock 90s strum to "Day One EightyThree"; he adds a more vulnerable tone to the vocal and layers them in harmonies as it progresses.

"On Watering Planets" also has a more strummed ballad feel like the Menzingers. His choruses build in the expected way, does not really hold up as solidly as the other songs. The title track is another emotional ballad of sorts that feels like one of the Cure's happier moments. Thevocals are layered with some Beatles influence to them. There are a few riffs that carry a Far-like cadence but are less emotionally intense. The difference would be Everclear to Sunny Day Real Estate. 

"Water in the Summer" is too happy for my tastes, but I can appreciate the songwriting. They end the album with another more fragile ballad that is not as sugary as, say, Dashboard Confessional, but heading in that direction.  I was waiting for it to kick in, and it jsut kind of ambles over its introspection. I will give it a 9 as he is a great songwriter; sometimes his intentions were jsut too different from what I wanted, but we have already gone over  this part.  

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