Reviews

This is the new six song ep from portland’s ever we fall. They play a softly melodic, low key indie rock/emo genre of music. I was fairly unimpressed on the first listen, but as I let it spin a couple more times, it grew on me. One thing that stands out about this band is the layering they put together on their songs. The entire band plays precisely with eachother, lending to it a clean and tight sound, complemented by the structure of the songs to form this deep and intricate feel. They also utilize a really minimal style on their breakdowns, letting the drums and bass go on their own for a while, before the guitars kick in with heavily delayed, quick melodic riffs. Three of the six songs on this ep are put together in this complex fashion. The other three sound like a more generic emo sound. The vocalist sounds very similar to the singer from taking back sunday, without the screaming though. The tone he has is something that seems to be pretty common in this genre, and while it is not off-putting, it is also not impressive of itself.  The strength is that the lyrics, which are also fairly generic, and the vocals are not the feature of the songs, and instead blend into the rest of the music well.  the vocalist does hit all the notes he goes for and remains within the layering.  standout tracks are the first song, Unwind, which is so eclectic in its structure that it remains interesting all the way through, and the third track Broadcast, which stands out for its complexity and layering.  the last track, Aria, is another example of their musicianship showing through in a very listenable song.  The other three tracks on the ep are disappointing for me because they lapse back into a very tired sounding formula which could have been songs from any taking back sunday cd, without the spacey, iridescent guitar licks and minimal breakdowns, and instead falling back to straight power chords and emo crooning.  all in all, I would say this record is worth checking out for fans of more a more melodic sound but may not be very influential to fans of heavier music. I was impressed with about half of it, and I will be looking forward to seeing if they can eliminate some of the generic stuff and really put together an entire cd of strong music.