Review Summary: Well-executed but uninspired, "How to Be Human" fails to capture the inventiveness of The Classic Crime's better material
I wanted to like this album, so, SO badly.
My first exposure to The Classic Crime came as a high school student, in a now-defunct warehouse/concert venue in Allenstown, New Hampshire (U.S.A.). The venue, Ground Zero, was better suited to high-school metalcore outfits than a Seattle rock group with a devoted, national fanbase touring for their sophomore album. To this day, I don’t know how that place booked the Classic Crime, but the 200-250 people there weren’t complaining. How could we? Here was a band with tight songwriting, solid instrumentality, anthemic vocals, and infectious energy, all hallmarks of a mainstream pop-rock sensation. And they were playing for a crowd of a few hundred, backwoods New Hampshire kids in a dingy warehouse. And they blew the f*****g doors off the place.
Needless to say, I was hooked, and have been rewarded for it ever since. After the release of “Vagabonds,” by all means a solid album, the band cut ties with Tooth & Nail Records and began to albums independently, securing funding through Kickstarter contributions from fans. The following two releases were, in my view, the strongest in the band’s catalogue: the diverse, refreshing, and catchy “Phoenix,” and the masterful “revisitation” and re-release of (mostly) previous tracks in the “What Was Done” compilation. These releases, in addition to The Silver Cord, showed a confident band that could gracefully thread a needle between formulaic songwriting and diverse elements.
At its best, TCC is a vocal-centric band with basic, pop-oriented song structures, but one that can mix in elements of groove, atmospherics, harmony, and emotional sincerity to create a rich and diverse sound. In weaker moments, its vices--over-adherence to formula and lyrical preachiness--can sap the band’s energy and emotionality. So, as with any TCC review, the key question behind “How to Be Human” remains: did the band lean into its virtues or its vices?
Answer: its vices. Bigtime.
More than any other Classic Crime album, “How to Be Human” suffers from a lack of inventiveness. Structurally, nearly every song features the verse-pre-chorus-chorus-verse-pre-chorus-chorus-bridge-chorus song structure. The pre-choruses, in particular, are maddeningly stale; good luck finding one without the exact same pattern of escalating palm mutes and snare hits leading into the chorus. They’re endemic in the album, but I nearly threw my computer across the room when the pre-chorus in “The Third Way” managed to flatten any energy the song had managed to build in its first verse. The album’s bridges are similarly uninspired: here, you’ll find plenty “oohh ahh” vocals (Driftwood, Black & White), palm-muted guitars playing quarter notes (Wonder), and uninteresting builds to a closing chorus (nearly all).
To make matters worse, several of the album’s most dynamic beats are lifted from earlier, better TCC material. The most egregious culprit is “Shades of Green” copy-and-pasting its bridge from the superior “You and Me Both,” but it’s not the only instance. Two songs borrow liberally from “Heaven and Hell”: the opening verses of “More” hew closely to that song’s rhythmic beats, while “Black & White” borrows the song’s structure and tone. “Holy Water,” an opening track with an odd time signature, can’t help but feel like a callback to “Just a Man.” Still, I won’t knock the guys too much: if you’re gonna plagiarize yourself, might as well do it from some of your best material.
As far as innovativeness is concerned, there are some different and new elements in the album, but they generally are underexplored or feel like forced, variety-for-variety’s-sake additions to songs instead of meaningful songwriting choices. “Not Done With You Yet,” “Ghost,” and “Shades of Green” feature groove-driven introductions that peter out into bland pre-choruses and choruses. “Holy Water” and “Driftwood” both feature variation in time signatures and quasi-rap vocal delivery from Matt MacDonald. Those variations, however, don't add much to the songs' dynamics, and the songs ultimately revert to vocal-driven, poppy choruses with hooks that aren’t engaging enough to justify their divergence from the more interesting verses.
Still, the album isn’t without its positives. As always, Matt MacDonald’s sincere delivery and range help to elevate some of the less-interesting material. Screams in “More” and “Black & White” lend some much-needed energy to those tracks, and his falsetto delivery in the bridge of “Spare Time” is wonderful. He also adds interesting and unconventional vocal rhythms to songs like “Not Done With You Yet” and “Holy Water.” Instrument-wise, the guitar here is adequate but unmemorable, perhaps due to a shift in focus to the rhythm section. The bass guitar is a central feature of the album, and adds some nice groove in the verses: “Holy Water,” “Wonder,” “Spare Time,” and “The Third Way” all feature some nice basslines. The drums get some time to shine in tracks like “Ghost” and “Driftwood.”
In terms of song quality, the latter half of the album features most of its better songs. "Wonder" and "More" successfully build tension where most other songs on the album squander momentum after the first chorus. "Driftwood" features a nice groove and interesting vocals. The album’s finest track, however, is its closer. “Black & White” kicks off with an intriguing chord progression and a waltz-like rhythm. It builds in tension, aided by a tasteful use of strings, female vocals, and shakers. Its sliding guitar octaves guide it through the end of the song, with Matt’s screams of “Am I Alone?” driving the song home along with some of the album’s existential lyrical themes. The longest song in The Classic Crime’s discography, it closes the album on a dynamic note, but it also may hew a bit too closely to “Heaven and Hell” for comfort.
Distilling my thoughts on “How to Be Human” to one word, the word I keep returning to is “unnecessary.” On the songwriting side, the album deeply lacks inventiveness and variation. On the performance side, there’s fine musicianship, but little tangible energy. On the production side, this album was produced independently, and thus wasn’t required by contract. My guess, informed by the album’s ambitious title and some pre-release interviews, is that Matt sought to emphasize the lyrics in this release. As those aren’t an area of emphasis for me, however, I’ll leave a closer lyrical analysis to another reviewer. As it stands, “How to Be Human” boasts the Classic Crime's solid musicianship and warehouse-full of goodwill from this reviewer, but the album ultimately suffers from a lack of inspiration and overreliance on stale formulas.
Highlights:
Black & White
Driftwood
Wonder
More
If interested, here's a link to the pre-release interview with Matt MacDonald that I referenced in the review:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mattmacdonald/the-classic-crimes-follow-up-to-phoenix/posts/1673487
