Review Summary: I've got a familiar feeling that everybody knows
In a genre so over-saturated such as pop-punk, it's a blessing that there are bands out there still trying to keep the genres mentality alive: keeping it fun.
To the onlooker, Farewell are your typical 5-piece American pop-punk band you'd expect to find in todays scene, and to an extent, they're right. What Farewell have, though, is a great song-writing dynamic that translates to the energy that's laid down on CD.
Isn't This Supposed To Be Fun? harbors 12 tracks, many of them just brushing the 3 minute mark. While mostly inoffensive, Farewell have a gritty sarcasm to both their lyrics and their music. Bouncing basslines and synths that wouldn't fit out of place in the ears of a retro gamer meet fairly beefy riffs quite nicely. The drumming is also excellent; always in time, really loud and sharp, and ridiculously varied styles of drumming that define almost every song.
There's not a song on the album that really can be identified as filler; each song is well written and nicely performed. One song that does slow the album down is War, which can be described as the album 'ballad', although not a ballad in the traditional sense due to it picking up speed and volume mid-way.
Track 3, First One On The Blog, is the albums first single and although it's not the most original track on the CD, it's a short but raucous ode to friendship. Lyrics such as 'fight', 'stand' and 'scream' are used as chants within verses, and without calling this generic, it's definitely been done before. Sing, Baby is another prime example of Farewell's sound. Simple, sing-along chorus and a really ***ing great showcase of the bands musicianship. The word that comes to mind is 'bouncy'.
Another interesting point of the album is Eighty-Eights, which kicks off with a wet 8-bit synth that manages to weave it's way through the entire song. It doesn't get in the way, but it's there when you listen for it. Avoid this song in the morning, as this song is also bound to get wedged in your head the entire day. Catchiness is another little teeny gripe with this album. There's a tendency for catchy poppy songs to get boring quite quickly if the song is relying on it, which is a shame, because these a really well written songs.
The album is what pop-punk should be, fun and fast with little hesitation and plenty of replayability. With hardly any filler, synths that change straightforward rock songs into little 3 minutes nuggets of fun and a band extremely capable of pulling out some great music in the future, this album is a great distraction from all the bull*** that you're probably experiencing right now, because life is a miserable sod.
