Review Summary: It shows, you don't, care
What's cool about Brave Bird is they like to mess around, get jiggy with it, and get down to brass tacks. They like to play some twinkles, but they also like to get all indie on you sometimes and even break out the occasional post-rock section. On
Maybe You, No One Else Worth It, Brave Bird prove that while having complete sentences for album titles may not be one of the band's strongest points, a penchant for diversity in songwriting certainly is.
A lot of emo these days seems to be either depressing all the time, or fun jam time stuff the whole way through. Brave Bird are pretty rad because of their ability to interweave these two styles, creating a much more cohesive sound in the process. Brave Bird have some really great and catchy twinkly math riffs like in "The Worst Things Happen To Me" and "Tired Enough," but the band is at their best when they take their time and flesh out their songs. Songs like "Thick Skin" and the title track have great build up song structures that take their time and then hit you hard with massive feels. The slow start to "Thick Skin" helps develop an atmosphere that explodes when the instruments start to come in fuller and is followed by an emotional chant of "It shows you don't care," which shows how much the band cares about paying off the tension that they just built up. Brave Bird's vocalist's style also helps diversify the band's sound. He sings in two distinct modes, his lower register which sounds a lot like Jesse Lacey from Brand New, and his upper register when he starts yelling that sounds a bit like Snowing style vocals. The singer's dual vocal attack perfectly fits the band's every changing shifts between slower softer parts and intense faster paced parts. Brave Bird do a seamless job of integrating both styles without the record feeling disjointed; the result of this cohesion is a well crafted and fun record that never loses focus.
Maybe You, No One Else Worth It features four out of five of the songs from the band's debut EP re-recorded style, which could easily be the album's downfall, but instead plays in its favor because they're just really good and have a lot of staying power. At first I felt cheated that the album only has six new songs, but then I remember that those other four songs ***ing rule and sound even better re-recorded. On the new and the old tracks of
Maybe You, No One Else Worth It Brave Bird do a fine job of building on and refining the sound of the band's debut EP, which is all one can ask for in a follow up album.
