Reviews

Make Do and Mend are exactly what they promise: the depth of Hot Water Music and the youthfulness of Jimmy Eat World. To take a line from their promotional material, "Make Do And Mend creates a dark pop punk sound more mature than the New-Found-Glory-era [they] grew up in, but still nostalgic of a genre that defined [their] young lives." I can't say it better myself. If that's what they set out to do, they did it. It's pretty impressive that MDAM managed to take a sound like Hot Water's and make it poppier without sounding like a more accessible, generic knockoff. Instead they took a great sound, combined it with their personal history, and created something both unique and believable.

Two tracks particularly stand out in my mind. Track four, "Viking Funeral," starts with some jabbing guitar sections before breaking down into pulsing bass and then bursting forward. The interlude allows the bass to prominently come out from underneath the song, followed by a chant-a-long section. The dynamic between the vocalists is executed perfectly and the song travels between the regret of "what have I done?" and the hope of "these words and chords could turn your life around," culminating in one tough but fun track.

The second track, "Staring Problem," may be my favorite. It basically takes the concept of Elvis Costello's "Alison," and reworks it into a story about a young boy who dies without ever telling his Alison about his unspoken love. While Costello's version is from the perspective of an aging adult who revisits an unrequited love, MDAM tells the story from the perspective of persistent youthful affection.

The lyrics that tie the two songs appear in the poem the kid writes his love: "Alison, I know this world is killing one of us, but that doesn't change the way you smile." Musically, the sound of "Staring Problem" is much lighter and more youthful and vigorous than Costello's lonely and mournful tune, as it adopts to a different narrator.

I personally thought it was so interesting and refreshing to see what a young band did with the sentiments of such a classic tune, and how seamlessly they adopted the perspective of youth that is both innocent and dark.

The balance between the naïve innocence of youth and the severity of growing up is reflected throughout the whole EP. We're All Just Living essentially deals with the years of your life where you kind of slowly realize you're growing up and dealing with a new set of rules. Being waist-deep in these years myself, I can certainly relate to the shifting feelings of optimism, dread and nostalgia.

And now that I have amply covered everything I love about this EP, we reach the point in the review where I have to bring up the tragic middle track, "Interlewd." First of all, misspelling ‘lude' doesn't make any sense because nothing about this song is ‘lewd.'

Second, I understand that sometimes we all get our hearts broken and spend hours drowning our sorrows in "Konstantine" by Something Corporate or even "Screaming Infidelities" by Dashboard Confessional. I think "Interlewd" was an attempt to recreate these heartbroken sob-songs from our teenage years, but instead it comes off sounding more like "I'm All Out of Love" by Air Supply or "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?" by Michael Bolton. The lyrics aren't even so bad (though they aren't good), but the wilted, piano-driven, disjointed music with roomy, Boyz II Men-style crooning is shudder-worthy. I instantly deleted it from my iTunes and now that the EP skips from track two to four, it's perfect. Unfortunately, it doesn't come that way, so I knocked off a star. I couldn't knock off more, though. The rest of the EP is so endearingly original and excellently crafted that it's still worth four stars.