Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Four Year Strong - Explains It All

When I heard that Four Year Strong's new album was not contain any new material, I was a little disappointed. They have an amazing talent to write catchy music. So again, when I heard that it was going to be a 90's cover album, my brain was a little divided. I mean, I grew up in the 90s, I was there for the birth of web-tv, the birth of cable internet, I was old enough to understand the Clinton scandle, I was just getting into music when Kurt Cobain passed, I was a child of the 90's, and I was excited to hear the musical memories of mine were going to be covered by one of my current favorite bands almost (and in some cases over) a decade later. At the same time, I was upset there wasn't any new tunes.

The first post of any song off their album was the cover of Absolutely (Story of a Girl) and I didn't think that it was well done at all. I mean, I could tell they wanted it to sound like older style covers. Back when punk covers were punk, not highly-tuned and very well mixed tracks. I thought the drumming was horrid, and the instrumentals were sloppy at best.

But a few weeks later they posted the cover of "Semi-Charmed Life", and I was enthralled. Back when I first heard of Third Eye Blind, and I first heard this song, I found out my sister had the album. I snuck into her room and grabbed the cd (which, by the way youngin's, back in the early 90's, cd's were actually about twice as thick, and still can play in the early version cd players,) popped the cd into my playstation, plugged headphones into my 13 inch tv, and played this track over and over. Needless to say, this was giving me a glimmer of hope for the rest of the album.

Then, I saw the track list. Give me a moment to say, friggin amazing choices! From the first track on the album ("So Much for the Afterglow", formerly by Everclear), to the last song ("She's So High"), I was jamming the entire time! And a little FYI, "So Much For The Afterglow" was also the first song on the Everclear album as well, which is cool. I always thought it was a perfect intro song. Continuing on, the cover of "Ironic" is simply mind blowing. I still can't get over the fact that they covered "Roll to Me", it was one of those monumental songs of the 90's, and I am glad that it was covered!

The bands covered are everything from Sugar Ray to Alanis Morrisette, to Smashing Pumpkins. All in all, Four Year Strong did a great job of encompassing a lot of great musical sides of the 90's and bringing it into one album that hopefully kids these days will be able to relate to.

After "Roll to Me" is "Fly", in which features Travis from Gym Class Heros, always a good choice with "rap" parts in songs. Let me just say this cover is very well done. Like I said, at no point during this album do I stop jamming and enjoying myself. The album ends with "She's So High", which I hate to say was one of my favorite songs of the 90's, the only song I wish was done that wasn't was "Breakfast at Tiffany's".

























Album: 6 out of 10 zings.

Message to Band: The reason the rating is so low is because you should have at least thrown a couple of originals on there as bonus tracks or something. I am also one of those people who think Nirvana should never be covered. There are also two covers that don't make me rock out as hard, and the album isn't a constant, meaning I'll probably skip a couple of tracks when I listen to it. Lets hear some originals dudes.

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