One of the things
I learned to today after drifting for
hours in the rabbit hole that is music blogs is that emo and hardcore did not
die with myspace but thrive on a underground of there and one of the most raved
about bands in this circle of blogs is The World is a Beautiful Place and I am
No Longer Afraid to Die... thats their full name , back in the nineties I was a fan of Sunnyday Real
Estate, Hot Water Music, Mineral and the
all the other spawn of Fugazi. These emo kids are even more hipster than the ones I grrew up with because theres already a huge fan base for a band whos debut album doesn't come out til June 18th .
The vocals teeter on being in key and are more Modest Mouse than
sunny day. They are the element that took the most gettting use to for me. As a whole the album is more heavily orchestrated than I imagined it would the riff in the last
minute and a half is pretty cool, they do capture some more post rocky space
exploration
The trumpet at the
beginning of "Fightboat", is one of the touches that helps keeps their sound left
of center the more hardcore backup vocals aren’t the strong suit , I thought
this was going to be closer to screamo. I can hear where they might have grown up on a steady diet of Brand New. The female vocals smattered on the ending work for what they are going for.
"Picture of a tree that doesn’t look okay", has a cello low in
the mix and floating guitar lines slightly morose , no where near as dark as
sunny day dips on how it feels to be something on they stay well away from
dashboard confessional territory even in their more sentimental sections.Melodically the closest relation seemed to be the Get up
kids in where the melodies want to go. I would say if you didn't listen to the first wave of emo then their influences are more obscure and they are going for their own sound and are not just a tribute to nineties indie rock.
"You Will Never go to Space" tends to fall on more of the post-rock side of what they do. I like this side to the band as its darker and more cinematic than the optimistic take on emo. " The Layers of Skin we Drag Around" is more straight forward and has to be to the point as it's only a minute and a half long, so never really develops.
"Ultimate Steve" warms up from it's post-rock shimmer, into a slow steady upward climb, to the point of where the build is a long as the actual song which has almost a choral sing along feel as layers of vocals with a live feel roll in before the song simmers back into atmosphere, they get credit for original arrangments here. I think the strongest melodies are on the song " the Gig Life" it starts off like a Bright Eyes b-side but when it reaches the chorus finds it's own place.
"Low Light Assembly" sounds more like an idea of a song which could have been the part of one of their shorter songs, it has a post-rock piano opening and a pretty enough guitar part, the chorus of layered vocals has a more subdued sing along feel. It hovers around the one waking melody and feels like it needs to build from there and is incomplete on it's own two feet.
"Getting Sodas" has a more apathy to it's pondering , the guitars go from crystalline into a synchopated punch the attempt at hard core vocals returns with the same effect, but the guitars go to some intresting places with their jerky punches.
I think this will continue to grow on me and I have like it much more than I expected, with some of the incomplete thoughts in song writing and the inconsistant vocals which still try pretty hard at what they do but keep it from being a perfect album , though there are some really pretty guitars that compensate for them so I will give this one a 9.
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