Last summer I had the displeasure of seeing the band Eleventyseven live. I was at a summer music festival and I saw that very unique name on the program and thought it might be cool to check them out. I didn’t have anything else to do at that time so me and my friends went to the stage. When we got there, there was a decent amount of people there and I was thinking that this would be an alright concert. But then the music started playing and I realized that I couldn’t have been more wrong. What I was listening to was pop-punk at its worse. I’m not going to get into details about the concert but they did do a horrible cover of the Backstreet Boys that involved what they classified as screaming. But enough of that, Eleventyseven is a 3 piece pop-punk band that has its roots in Greenville, South Carolina. This CD And The Land Of Fake Believe is their first release off of their record label Flicker Records.
Band Members
Matt Langston: Guitar Vocals
Caleb Satterfield: Bass/Vocals
Jonathan Stephens: Drums/Vocals
If the album name isn’t enough to warn you that this might be a tad ridiculous you could just flip the CD over and look at the names of the songs. A few highlights include Nostalglatopia, The Unicorn Revolt, or Teenage Heartbreak. But as soon as you get the courage to pop this CD in, it just takes that to a whole new level. The vocals are usually higher then you think many males should be allowed to reach. And if you actually listen to the lyrics they are usually singing about some of the stupidest things. Let’s take for example the creative single “Myspace”
“Tell me all about yourself tell me all about you favorite band. How their super-indie-neo-hardcore.”
Or another line;
“cuz I could know everything thing about you and know nothing at all”
See they’re talking about Myspace and that they can know everything that you say about you but it might not be true. See they’re just like us, they use Myspace. And that’s not the only area where And The Land Of Fake Believe falls flat on its face.
When dealing with pop-punk bands they are usually not the most creative or technically sound, but they can catch you off guard sometimes. But with Eleventyseven you see the lack of creativity more often then not. Sure you can get some pretty cool guitar parts from time to time. (See A Stellar Sayonara or the intro to Myspace.) While this band's guitarist might have a few highlights, the drums on the other hand really don’t. But if you listen to just a single song you would think, “This guy has some pretty good drum chops” but then you listen to the rest of the CD and you’re like “Hey I heard this on the last song, and the song before that.” But that one drum beat he rehashes is pretty cool.
But not everything on this album is bad. It has some redeeming qualities. The biggest redeeming quality is that they can definitely write a song that can be stuck in your head for a long time. With about ¾ of the song here you get songs that really can’t get out of your head or songs that you can’t stop singing even if you think they are obnoxious. I also touched on the singing before and it actually can grow on you in a weird sort of a way. He does sing high and does sing about God a lot but there are most definitely worse vocalists out there.
Overall this is an album that does what it tries to do. It’s catchy and it has a positive message. This band really won’t make people want to get into the genre and it definitely wont’ be for people that live by this genre. It’s probably for people who really don’t really care for the musicianship that much but for people who just want to have a good time and a fun listen.
