When the World Comes Down...

I saw The All-American Rejects at GIAN 07. They were as enjoyable as American pop-punk can be. (Does that genre even exist anymore? It seemed such a lazy catogory in the first place...) The band's fourth album, When the World Comes Down came out last month. I'd never actually listened to one of the band's albums before, I'd only heard the singles, so I figured it was time to give it a try.

I have to say, I don't think I've ever heard such a mixed album. And I don't mean mixed as in well recorded. Or varied in its genres. I mean mixed, as in one song can be one of the best tracks I've heard in my life and then the next can be the dullest peace of music to ever to grace a CD.

The first four tracks are excellent. If there rest of the album was of the same standard you'd be looking at a pretty impressive effort for a fourth album. But then track five kicks in. I say kicks, more stumbles in and plods along like an old dog. A typical acoustic track with very little heart. Maybe I'm spoilt by the likes of City and Colour and Bon Iver, but I expect my acoustic songs to have some soul.

At first, this track seems to be a slight stumble in the quality of the album. Track 6, 'Breakin'' is good enough to hold its own against tracks by Jimmy Eat World and the true masters of emo-pop. See, I can invent genres too. The quality doesn't last very long however when track 7, 'Another Heart Calls' drags the whole thing back down to earth. I don't know why bands have started insisting on having the token 'let's get a random girl to sing' track, but it takes something special to pull it off. This track manages it half of the time. The rest of the time it sounds dull and unoriginal.

After that, it doesn't really get much better. It's amazing how a band can vary from the heights of being compared to Jimmy Eat World to sounding like McFly on a bad day. The last couple of tracks are a little brighter, but don't compare to the first few in the slightest.

This album actually annoyed me so much in its variation I made a graph. Yeah, that's what I do when things cross me. I attack them with numbers and pretty pictures. Take that All-American Rejects. Make your album all-good next time, rather than just half-good.

'When the World Comes Down' graph of good/rubbishness...