Review Summary: A solid effort in a maturing artist, with a couple duds in between.
In 2007, a bright eyed young lad named Dave Days bursted onto the YouTube music scene with hilarious parodies & cover videos, implementing some original songs into the mix. One complilation album & 2 E.P.s later, Dave releases his third E.P. "Pizza Ship" (took me longer than I'm proud to admit to get the word play joke there) & how does it fair compared to his other titles?
Well, for starters, one thing people will notice about the record is it's sound. I'm not talking genre here, I'm talking production. The E.P. is produced beautifully; the guitars are punchy & distorted enough for his pop-punk roots but not too mudded down to where you can't tell what chords he's playing. The drums have a solid strike to them & Daves vocals (though very, very produced with pitch correction) is clear & striking. The record has a much darker sound in the production, it doesn't sound like a typical pop-punk album, like his last E.P. "We're Just Kids" which sounded like another generic modern punk-poppy, blink-182 rip record. It does seem take influences from his first release, "Dinner & a Movie" which was a fantastic pop record, & turn its catchy hooks & in-your-face rhythms into a more mature sounding, rock powerhouse.
That being said, the 'mature' factor on the album is only in it's sound, not in its writing. Now, Dave has never been one for writing complex lyrics in his albums, they are usually simple songs with some teenage/young adult angst mixed in & there's nothing wrong with that. The two tracks that show more of an adult take on lyricism are the opener "Baddest" asking how far would you go to make it, & the closer "Right for Me" about realising that the one you decided wasn't right for you was who you needed all along. These are the two best tracks on the record by far. The second track "Sinking in Love" which served as the first single, is a nice & fun rock song which will have you shouting with it's infectious chorus, however the other two tacks "Blacked Out" & "3 A.M." are defiantly the weak links. Blacked Out throws out the mature sound & turns into another song about partying & drinking too hard. 3 A.M. is a song about booty calls, & decides to try & sound edgy with its lyric 'Roll a blunt, got me in the zone" which serves nothing to the song & is a poor choice of lyrics because it has nothing to do with the rest of the song. It sounds like a poor attempt at combining rapcore/gangstah with rock & it just falls flat, being the worst song on the E.P. also if you were to tell me Dave Days, with his more innocent song writting of "First Kiss" & "What Does it Take" would be singing about weed & drinking until you pass out, I don't think I'd believe you. These two tracks sound as if Dave is trying to reinvent himself from the nice kid to a hardcore rockstar to seem more grown up but it gives the opposite effect actually. The other three tracks are what shine as Dave Days growing up, not random party songs.
In the end, this is a pretty good E.P. with three solid tracks & two unfortunate duds. Fans od Daves other work might enjoy it or will not be as comfortable with his heavier style, but can still acknowledge when he writes a solid song or two. I'd say gice it a listen if not for the opening & closing songs, & the rest might be skipple or passible depending on your own opinion.
