Big Orange Crayonmusical thingsThe Promise Ring Very Emergency Jade Tree This is one of the albums I had been anticipating with much impatience this year. I'm a huge Promise Ring fan and all of that, so that makes it kind of hard to review them. Oh well. This is a very different record from Nothing Feels Good, which is both good and not so good. It's not so good in that Nothing Feels Good is one of my all time favorite records and this one doesn't strike me at quite the same level, but it's good in that I probably would have been upset if all they did was make Nothing Feels Good II and didn't progress at all as a band. But I guess that that's just more of a lose/lose situation that a band is faced with after putting out a wonderful album. But this is still a great album for what it is. The songs are generally more upbeat than before, that's not to say that the songs on their previous album weren't upbeat, but they all had a sort of pained sweetness to them that gave the album it's upbeat but meloncholy feel while Very Emergency is, with the exception of "All of My Everythings" more hardcore upbeat. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I am a great lover of happy music, but I kinda miss the sadness. Of course it's absolutely dastardly to talk about an album completely in terms of the one that came before it, so I'll focus a bit more on Very Emergency now. The highlight of the album for me is "The Deep South," which is very bouncy and fun and has the wonderful line "I know that bridges and houses are learning to fly / only secretly so we won't know why / and good for them." The album is pretty straight forward happy pop rock. If you're like me you'll get very strong urges to sing along, even when it would be embarassing. So, yeah, this album is pretty much another step for the Promise Ring away from their more emo past towards a more poppier sound. If that will upset you, there's not really much you can do about it, but most likely people who liked the Promise Ring before still will. Total score : 439 out of 440 |