The Honorary Title - Anything Else But The Truth Review

The Honorary Title Anything Else But The Truth

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Tracklist:
1 Frame By Frame
2 Bridge And Tunnel
3 Everything I Once Had
4 Cut Short
5 Points Underneath
6 Anything Else But The Truth
7 Revealing Too Much
8 Snow Day
9 Disengage
10 The Smoking Pose
11 Petals
12 Cats In Heat

Ranking: #67 for 2004

user rating

3.9
excellent

Chart.

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On 5 Lists

4.0
excellent

Shikyo USER (5 Reviews)

2006-04-14 | 11 comments | 1,075 views

5 of 5 thought this review was well written

First of all, I would like to say that I am NOT reviewing the reissue. I don’t have the reissued version. The reissued version contains five remixes of songs on the original version and a music video. Technically, it’s the same CD, there isn’t anything too new. Now, I will get onto the review.

“The Honorary Title is Jarrod Gorbel and Aaron Kamstra. Gorbel bares his soul using his soaring voice and intricately worded narrative, while multi-instrumentalist Aaron Kamstra augments the melodies using an assortment of synths, organ and piano parts. Drawing on an electic range of influences that includes Elvis Costello, Bright Eyes and Jeff Buckley, The Honorary Title combines raw emotion with pop hooks and remarkably poetic lyrics to write songs that defy simple genre classifications. The bands indie sensibility is fleshed out on the richly orchestrated Anything Else But The Truth, due out on June 1st, 2004 on Doghouse Records. The album was recorded last fall in New York and Nashville, with help of producer Roger Moutenot, known for his work with Yo la Tengo, Guster, and Josh Rouse."
(Background information taken from their website.)

This album starts off with the song Frame By Frame, which is their most popular single that they have released from Anything Else But The Truth. If there is anything song that could sum up what this band sounds in one song, it’s this song. The song contains an overall calm feel and the lyrics are about how he feels that he’s stuck in the frames of a movie. Frame By Frame is one of the highlights of this album. The next song, Bridge And Tunnel seems to repeat the same formula of Frame By Frame but only speeding everything up. Maybe if these songs were spaced farther apart on the album, it would contain a bigger impact than it did.

When I first sat down and listened to this album, Everything I Once Had stuck out to me the most. The song starts off slow but sounds really amazing. Jarrod’s lyrics talent are shown perfectly and the instruments blend in wonderfully. The song does seem to become a little repetitive near the middle but that doesn’t last long because around two and a half minutes into the song Jarrod gets rid of his normal singing style and takes more of a Conor Oberst approach, making his voice soar high and emotional, to end the song.

After Everything I Once Had the album seems to dip down into the average. The only thing exciting about Cut Short is the chorus because you can feel some emotion in his voice, the rest of the song seems dull and boring. Perhaps this song sounds bad because it just came after one of the greatest songs on the album. Points Underneath throw in a whole new feel to the album. It’s slower than other songs on the CD and gives somewhat of an old fashioned feel. This song is good the first few times that you listen to it, however it will get boring after a while.

Song number six, Anything Else But The Truth, which is obviously the title song comes and saves the album from going back into the average again. The song is pretty fast-paced, however is over four minutes long so it doesn’t end short. Jarrod uses his falsetto voice a lot in this track and Aaron does some great backup vocals and they harmonize each other wonderfully.

Would I be Revealing Too Much if I said that after this song the album goes back into the average again and stays that way? Revealing Too Much could be compared to Everything I Once Had seeing as they follow the exact same formula and it works just as amazing again. The songs starts off with synth and around two and a half minutes into the song (again) he goes into the same vocal style from Everything I Once Had, talking about how he loves this girl but he also hopes that he isn’t revealing too much.

When I first got this album last year during the winter, I listened to Snow Day every time that I wanted snow. It never snowed when I wanted it to though. Just like Cut Short before it, the only exciting part is the chorus however I put this song one above Cut Short because the bridge is great also and the song is surely something that everyone could agree with… unless you live on the coasts and you rarely see snow.

The rest of the CD, beginning with Disengage is complete let down. Some songs are just average and some are even below average. Disengage is one of the below average songs. It’s really boring and repetitive and there is nothing in the song that is exciting at all. The Smoking Pose is an attempt to improve the album but it doesn’t really go off too well since the song gets really repetitive near the end. If they would of added some change around the middle of the song, this could have been a spike to stop the death at the end of the album.

Pedals and Cats In Heat could easily be compared to Disengage because it gets repetitive pretty quickly. However, near the end of Cats In Heat Jarrod does some nice harmonics over a piano and finishes in the same style as Revealing Too Much and Everything I Once Had, however it seems too forced and it would have been better if they ended the album with Jarrod’s harmonics over the piano.

Overall, this album is pretty great. It does get pretty repetitive and average but there are songs that save the album from just being average. Revealing Too Much, Everything I Once Had and Anything Else But The Truth are highlights of the album. Cats In Heat are a decent ending the album but I’d say that they could of tried to make it less repetitive.

Songs To Love
Revealing Too Much
Everything I Once Had
Anything Else But The Truth
Frame By Frame

This is my first review, so hopefully everyone enjoys and I would love to know what I have done wrong and right with this review. Thanks.

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