Reviews

First, I love the singers voice, it can be both bold and ethereal. Second, I love the artwork.  It is the best booklet I’ve seen this side of, well, anything by Jacob Bannon.  That being said, I loved the singers voice and I loved the artwork on “Light a Match, For I Deserve to Burn,” TBM’s previous full length, and I never listen to that. Ever. There is something that doesn’t captivate me about this otherwise well crafted album. There are interesting arrangements, some slick production, some crafty hooks to keep you singing along, and yet there is no drive, push. The spark of life that keeps music moving forward is barely a flicker. The music seems languid, the guitar riffs solid, but casual, with nothing invested in them. This inertia might be caused by the vague lyrics, so indistinct that rather than becoming universal, they remain the muddled musings of a solitary man. The inactivity might also have root in the beautiful sounds that the core of the band, the two guitars, the bass, and the drums are creating. It’s gorgeous, but they are so caught up in making the individual sounds that the overall sounds, and the urgency, suffers incalculably. The Beautiful Mistake chart some new sonic territory on “This is Who You Are,” offering a new take on the Saves The Day/Thursday/”The Satellite Years”-era Hopesfall, but it falls short of amazing.