There are a few obvious clues I tend to look for that indicate whether or not a band is doing something right or not. This can range from whether I start humming or singing along to it quickly, repeated playing, etc. But, when I end up playing an album for eight hours straight the day after I first hear it, and I'm singing along to 80% of the lyrics before the end of the week, I don't really need any more indicators to know that said band is doing something very, very right.
When I first heard Alexisonfire, it was just before their self-titled full-length came out, and I wasn't terribly excited about the MP3s I had heard. As a result, I didn't bother picking it up or even downloading it. And looking back, that's fine, because "Watch Out!" outshines its predecessor by a long shot. The primary improvement on this new release is a simple one: attention to melody. Musicianship, production – these aspects have improved noticeably as well, but the melodies on this album are what swept me off my feet, and I have a feeling this is what most people will find out first, too. And it's not exactly the guitar that's so powerful here, but the vocals. Both guitarists Dallas Green and Wade MacNeil get so much time in the limelight themselves that I wonder sometimes what frontman George Pettit does onstage most of the time. While Pettit's scream is excellent in its own right, the multi-layered vocal harmonies that Green and MacNeil pull off are almost 100% unforgettable. I rarely would say that about any album I own, and I would even more rarely claim that every song on a disc is worth playing all the way through.
But rather than go on about this album as a whole, I'd rather quickly highlight some of the best songs on this release. The first track "Accidents" is the perfect opener to any first-time listener in terms of foreshadowing; and what is to be expected are moving guitar riffs and a thunderous vocal presence. The high spot of this track are the group vocal "whoa's" that rival those done by AFI in their ‘glory' days. Next in line is "Side Walk When She Walks," a song whose chorus carries the same powerful and poignant tone as the aforementioned song, but does so on a much deeper and more emotional level. Both "No Transitory" and "That Girl Possessed" feature some of the best harmonies and well-structured songwriting I've been lucky enough to hear all year, while "White Devil" is the first song I've come across tackling the (fairly prominent and widespread) problem of cocaine use among the ‘new' crowd of scene kids. The last two tracks "Get Fighted" and "Happiness By The Kilowatt" again showcase the band's penchant for excellent lyrics ("My greatest gift to you in a dance floor free from insecurity") and top-notch vocal melodies.
I know that perhaps my descriptions of this album may be somewhat vague, but when a band such as Alexisonfire has a sound so monumental, it's hard to pin them down into a neat little review. I can't compare them to AFI or Thursday or Codeseven or any other large band, even though they share some similarities with these groups, because Alexisonfire has a truly unique sound and feel (which is strengthened by everything from the music to the lyrics to the layout, which is also phenomenal) that it does no justice simply comparing them to someone else. The best thing to do is to just listen to them yourself and pass judgment on your own.
Bottom Line: Not at all akin to their last full-length on Equal Vision, Alexisonfire has put out an album that has pushed their sound to an extreme and have partially redefined, I think, what this genre of music will begin to sound like in the coming years. I have no doubt that this will be the post/emotional-hardcore/rock album of the year. |
