Mayday Parade - Anywhere But Here Review

Mayday Parade Anywhere But Here

full review

Tracklist:
1. Kids in Love
2. Anywhere But Here
3. The Silence
4. Still Breathing
5. Bruised and Scarred
6. If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?
7. Save Your Heart
8. Get Up
9. Center of Attention
10. I Swear This Time I Mean It
11. The End

Release Date: 10/06/2009

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3.2
good

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Adam Knott CONTRIBUTOR (3)
The chaos and blissful naivety give way to something more generic; Mayday Parade still have enough t...

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On 4 Lists

3.5
great

Jom STAFF (70 Reviews)

2009-10-01 | 40 comments | 5,148 views

Summary: Despite Lancaster's absence and some here-and-there musical ennui, Mayday Parade persevere and craft one of the genre's better records of 2009.

Call me insensitive if you dare, but breaking up isn't hard to do. Relationships falter for all sorts of stupid (and, in rare cases, legitimate) reasons, and white lies and half-truths are no way to show someone that you care about him/her. What makes things difficult is when only one out of the two people in the relationship realizes that it takes a certain level of maturity and grace after the break-up to be amicable towards one another, even if both involved want to see the other mainline Drano or suck an exhaust pipe.

It's with a great sense of parallel that my association with Mayday Parade was, once upon a time, based solely on an ex-girlfriend's obsession with their debut LP (A Lesson in Romantics, a rather brilliant and auspicious record), and it's with an intriguing sense of irony that the Tallahassee, Florida-based quintet have gone through a bit of strife (and subsequent growth) themselves. After Romantics' release, primary songwriter Jason Lancaster - who wrote every song on the record - abruptly left the band, with some bad blood surfacing shortly thereafter. Some have postulated that Lancaster defined Mayday Parade; for example, his final revisions to the Romantics version of "Jamie All Over" - one of the best cuts on the album (and, cruelly, the name of that selfish and immature ex-girlfriend) - differ so significantly from his original cut (taken from his Kid From Chicago days) that anything Mayday Parade did post-Lancaster would be lacking that heterogeneous, recognizable sound that separates the band from their contemporaries. Others believed that Mayday Parade would still press on as a quintet, with bassist Jeremy Lenzo singing Lancaster's vocal parts live complemented by primary vocalist Derek Sanders taking on a more authoritative lead vocal role in the band. Up until the first singles were released from Anywhere But Here, it was left to conjecture as to how the band would sound without Lancaster. What listeners are left with is best described by paraphrasing Carl Bard: "Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new beginning."

More or less, that's exactly what the post-Lancaster Mayday Parade have attained, and out of respect for their accomplishment, it's crucial to focus on the quintet who actually performed on the record (alongside the aforementioned Sanders and Lenzo, guitarists Alex Garcia and Brooks Betts are joined by Jake Bundrick to round out the quintet) and emphasize the band's instrumental maturity as well as Sanders' continued vocal prowess. It's true that the dual vocal paradigm added a palpable musical dynamic, and make no mistake, Anywhere But Here is a conflicted record: a majority of its playability is inherently targeted to a specific age and the consequent lyrical fawning and saccharine-sweet affection can be borderline nauseating, but it's a testament to the band's fortitude that they can craft a nice-and-concise thirty-eight minute record rife with anthemic choruses, memorable guitar leads, catchy main riffs, and Sanders' soaring vocals, all backed by an assertive, yet never domineering, rhythm section.

The band's guitar melodies are above the normal genre standard, and while there are less solos on Anywhere But Here in comparison to A Lesson in Romantics, the lead and rhythm guitar sections leave favorable impressions. Take for instance lead single and album highlight "The Silence," whose simple-yet-effective guitar lead backed by palm-muted chords segues masterfully into Sanders' soothing vocals. That recurring lead percolates throughout the track, and Sanders weaves a somber tale about "the bitterness of loneliness": "Lost in everything she trusts, still can't seem to get enough / Even though the world she loved, it won't ever be the way it was / And his heart of stone left hers breaking / Every night she cries and dies a little more each time / Say you love me . . . and the silence will set her free." Most impressive about "The Silence" - and many songs found on Anywhere But Here - is the sing-along capability these songs possess. Granted, a lot of the genre's success is predicated on the construction and execution of such anthemic choruses, but Mayday Parade have seemingly attained a workable, and certainly malleable, blueprint for success.

Other highlights include the blissful "Get Up," whose "In this moment, we're connected; if we fall, we fall together" line precedes the explosive "Get up, get up - sing it like you're screaming at me - get up, get up, love the way you make it look so easy / East Coast, West Coast, show me what you got now - let's go, let's go!" which will most definitely be a gig highlight in future tours. Backed by an impressive drum performance from drummer Bundrick, "Get Up's" infectious guitar grooves and vocal harmonies make for a terrific listen. The cathartic album closer "The End" is also significant in that the band acknowledges that people come and go out of life, but that a person doesn't need to ever feel isolated in this world: "To all my friends, let's make this count: we're not alone / How can you think that any of this was easy with all the friends I've lost along the way? / When this is over, we're all getting older now and we all play a part in it / Innocence is falling, can you hear them calling now? / And I'll be by your side until the end" is quite easily one of the strongest lyrical and vocal passages on Anywhere But Here. The guitar solos also add a tasteful element to the album closer, never distracting from the band's aforementioned point of emphasis.

Like "Jersey" and "Miserable at Best" from A Lesson in Romantics, Mayday Parade also continue to excel with the slower, ballad-esque tracks. "Save Your Heart" and "Still Breathing," while maybe not as emotionally gripping as the former two tracks, are nevertheless quintessential examples of Mayday having a knack for understanding the nuances of moderately-paced songs. For instance, "Still Breathing" is strongly supported by effect-laden guitars, Sanders' keyboard passages, and a beautiful guitar solo in the bridge, although the lyrics about the transition from break-up to singledom and moving on are obnoxiously sophomoric ("It's hard to be a man, but I'm doing all I can - I'm ready to give this all I have, I'm ready to be amazed - 'cause I'm standing here alone, trying to make this life my own / . . . Promise me some dignity if I were to stand and die here / 'Cause my heart is somewhere else - it's a pain I've never felt"). As for "Save Your Heart," the narrator engages a girl in conversation about finding love with the wrong people, as evidenced by lyrics such as "Just try to get up, you've gotta slowly brush off / I know that words aren't enough, but you're better than this / Save your heart for someone that's worth dying for, don't give it away / . . . And you give and they take / It's love that you want, but not love that you make." Once again, the elegant keyboards add an additional melancholic dimension to the track, but again, the instrumentation takes a backseat to the vocal message.

Obviously, listeners will miss the dual vocals and the equilibrium that existed as a result of each vocalist appropriately balancing the other musically, and this is apparent in the sterile "Kids in Love" and its meandering pace. It becomes evident as the album progresses that "Kids in Love" is a poor choice for an album opener - even if "Jamie All Over" set an impossible precedent to top - and the vom-inducing lyrical clichés heard in songs like "Bruised and Scarred" and "If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?" are excessively cringe-worthy, and songs like "Center of Attention" start off promising but lose steam at the verses and the energy can never be successfully resurrected. As alluded to before, Mayday Parade's lyrical themes are not particularly diverse - love lost and gained, hope for the future, and "being scared" (a phrase that finds itself in multiple songs throughout the record) - and may make for a homogeneous listen, especially when some of the more paint-by-numbers cuts bleed together.

All told, though, Anywhere But Here is the record bands like Boys Like Girls and All Time Low wish they could make, but lack the instrumental prowess and songwriting intelligence exhibited by Mayday Parade. While the absence of Lancaster will surely be significant to familiar fans - his songwriting mastery is superior across the board and his vocals are frequently sorely missed - but newcomers should stumble across a pleasant listen; albeit overly-saccharine at times, listeners will hear an album expertly led by catchy guitar melodies, Sanders' resolute vocals, and a steady rhythm section. Some of Mayday Parade's best material ("The Silence," "Get Up," and "The End") can be found on Anywhere But Here, and even with some rough key changes and a sizable amount of the record sounding incongruent or tiresome, Mayday Parade's fresh start and new beginning results in the band coming away with one of the better records of 2009.

B+

Jom recommends:

The Silence
The End
Get Up
Save Your Heart

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