Reviews
Yellowcard
Lights And Sounds
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Add to del.ico.us.Review Date: 2006-02-02
As a personal sabotage to myself I decided to review the new Yellowcard. I know most of you probably hate these guys and I'll be honest at this point I almost do hate Yellowcard, but mostly that annoying lead dude Ryan Key. This guy wears pretty boy to the extreme, I mean thank fuck he doesn't dress up like Joel Madden or else we'd have a new competitor in the role of worlds largest poser. Overall I like the music from Yellowcard but at this point the novelty of just adding in that violin is beginning to wear off, it doesn't mean I don't expect it to be present on the album, it just means I don't want them to rely on it for every track to sound wicked. I doubt that I will buy this album, mostly because I don't really think its anywhere as good as what they were doing just one album ago with Ocean Avenue. I own Ocean Avenue and the album prior to that One For The Kids, I don't dislike either of those albums but this is a Yellowcard album that I'm not particularly fond off. Maybe its Ryan Key, I would think that after hearing the album three times that I've come to the conclusion that douchebag is just ruining things for the band with all his freaking whining. One thing music will always have plenty of is whiners, people who have no reason to be upset about something but they act like its the worst thing in the world. The best example of this in punk music or even pop-punk music is the ex-girlfriend, women are a powerful force in any heterosexual males life but so powerful that you could write an entire album worth of material based on one breakup just boggles my fucking mind. Yellowcard seems to be shifting towards the pop-punk side of things, hell they were doing that on the Ocean Avenue album I was just blind to it because I dug the gimmick of adding in the violin. Oh well since Yellowcard I have been careful to not fall victim to the same rock formula of taking an old style of music and spicing it up by adding in a complete bullshit instrument.
The first track makes me want to punch Yellowcard in their collective nuts, its called "Three Flights Up". The reason that I want to smash them is because this song is a musical ballad that could be found in the classical section of your local music store. All this song consists of is some piano and violin, and its a light melody that you could have heard played during a very dramatic moment of someone’s life where they just found out who their dad is or they realize that their cancer has gone into remission, that sort of stuff. Regardless of how heartfelt the actual song might be it really doesn't bode well to start an album that should sound nothing like this with classical music. Even the simple transition from track to track won't be able to prevent how awkward it is going to sound going from this song into the second track "Lights And Sounds". The title track isn't really that great but its not that bad, I suppose average is a good spot for it. My largest problem with this song is that it's pacing is so much faster than that of the first one, but I only say this because I'm all fucked still from listening to their classical music efforts on "Three Flights Up". In the end just avoid the first song if you really want to try enjoying this album from the first track to the last, the first song will just dampen your mood immediately for the album.
"Sure Thing Falling" is the fourth song on the disc. The beginning of the song is this badass guitar which builds up into nothingness after twenty seconds. So they start with wicked guitar and then go into some light melodic rock where Ryan Key is singing like a total lameass about supernatural creatures, which I think are supposed to be metaphors but I have to be honest that I have no idea what the hell he is talking about. I used to think that Yellowcard could be one of those bands that could have ten albums over the course of their career but after listening to the lyrics on this track I think they are total losers. Key starts talking about remembering when they used to get high, which is pretty infuriating because I don't know that he ever touched something illegal anywhere. This song near the end turns into a song with a lot more emphasis on the instruments, including the guitar and drums in the first interesting thing on the album. Thats kind of harsh but no other real music has been worth writing home about until now, and they prevented the overall goodness of this track from rising because they decided it would be neat to only have badass rock music during the first twenty seconds and the last forty. Thats just annoying because if they had actually used that sound throughout the disc let alone this one song then they may have been onto something, instead its just another bad song on a shitty album.
The sixth song is one of the few that maintains a steady stream of energy and pace throughout the track, its called "Round Landing, Holly". This is easily my favourite song but mostly because the guitar in this track is pretty wicked, I like the pace of it altogether because it is the main reason that this song remains interesting. One thing that this album could use more of is well put together rock songs like the one featured on this track. However throughout the course of this song and most of the others present on the album, I have come to the conclusion that Ryan Key has begun to phase out the violin side of things. Because he's nowhere to be seen on this track and on some of the others he is but a small riff or two in the background. Basically there’s not that much violin in the album from what I can tell, which is odd because part of the reason that this band was popular in the first place came from the unusual oddity that they played punk or pop-punk tunes with the presences of an old school instrument like the violin.
The seventh song is a total piece of garbage, it’s like a love song from the fifties done by Frankie Vallie and The Four Seasons. Its called "Two Weeks From Twenty", which is an odd name for Yellowcard to throw on a song since its obvious to me they are all over twenty-five and to think they can party with people that are twenty is pretty lame of them. One thing that I want to be clear on is that this song is featuring some of the lamest guitar ever, it plucks a chord every three seconds for just one note and then repeats this cycle for the better part of the song. Ryan Key as always takes the reigns of the song as they feature his vocals more than anything else on the track, there is one part where he has to sing the word hero on a transition and its just terrible it almost sounds like his voice cracks during the whole thing. I can't believe that this loser is a lead singer of a band, why don't the other members smash his face in with a mallet and kick him out of the band for someone that can actually carry a tune. He does that hero thing a few times in the song so that lets me know that it was on purpose but I don't know why you would want badness to be put into your song on purpose, theres already a bunch of accidental badness did you think we might just overlook it?
Track eight is one of the few songs that has a decent amount of violin in it, its called "Waiting Game", its another one of those songs that starts off like it could be totally wicked and badass but then it goes into a downward spiral quicker than Trent Reznor on a bender. I don't want to talk about this song because its just that bad, and it lasts over four minutes, so four minutes of bad really just means skip this song. The fourteenth song is called "Holly Wood Died", which I thought was an interesting name for a song. But it really just sounds like they are making Hollywood into a person named Holly Wood and all the destruction that has taken place there over the years because of exploitation and so on. I don't know but may be Yellowcard is feeling a little overwhelming in the light of celebrity so as such they wrote this song to let people know that they still bleed on the inside like they do and aren't ironhearted celebrities with oodles of cash. I'll be honest if theres one thing I'd like to be its a celebrity, everyone would know you and you'd have a crapload of cash, I would buy a huge building of condominiums wherever I decided to settle down and invite all my friends to live there free, its gonna be the bomb.
Tracks To Steal: "Round Landing, Holly"
How are Yellowcard now that they are popular?
Have they decided to suck now that everyone is watching?
Score: 5.4
This is pretty terrible, not bad enough to fail but just good enough to pass, I can't believe how much of the life has been sucked out of this band, too many emotions and too many light and melodic tracks for me to ever think that they would be going in the right direction with this band.
- Brandon