Review Summary: Emarosa! At the Disco… literally though.
I won’t spend much time here diving into the similarities between Emarosa and Panic! At the Disco but between the shift from rock to pop, the disintegration of an actual band and, well,
other problems, it’s pretty uncanny. Emarosa is now a duo, composed of Bradley Walden and ER White, and while it wouldn’t shock me if Walden is on his own (or calling it quits, for that matter) before the year is out, let’s stick to the here and now for a minute.
Emarosa have just released their sixth studio album,
Sting. The album solidifies their transition from anything resembling rock and roll into a wholly pop act, replete with 80s synths, zig-zagging bass lines, funky guitars, and Walden crooning over all of it. Sounds kind of fun, right? Honestly, on first listen it
is pretty fun, but look a little closer and you’ll find that under the candy-coated shell lies a hollow, meaningless album that accomplishes the bare minimum necessary to entertain.
As mentioned above, the album has a thoroughly retro-pop, almost disco aesthetic. There are moderately catchy instrumentals, there are bouncy bass lines, and there is Bradley Walden, tons and tons of Bradley Walden. Look, Walden is far from a bad singer, but his performance highlights the foremost problem with the record. Due to the nature of the songwriting, Walden is expected to carry the album without a whole lot of backup from much of anything else. Unfortunately Walden doesn’t quite have the same charisma as others who inhabit this genre, and his performance doesn’t do a lot to set himself apart in his own right. It’s not that he doesn’t try; he does, but it’s hit or miss and he noticeably sounds out of his element at times. It seems like for every moment where Walden lets loose and captures the moment, there are two that sound out of place or awkward (just listen to the Jackson-esque shout at the onset of the record to know what I'm talking about).
He doesn’t get a whole lot of support from the songwriting though, which is the other major issue. To Emarosa's credit, the songwriting is lively and upbeat. The tunes are charming to an extent and it grooves enough to get the feet tapping and the head bobbing. The trouble is that there's a homogenous quality between songs that blurs them into a mush. I’m not some authority on pop music, but every great pop album I have personally listened to was composed of songs that, while they may have been part of a thematic whole, each had unique aspects that made them memorable in their own right. The record’s synthpop theme is cohesive, but it’s almost to a fault. It has a lot of catchy segments, but so much of the album blends into itself musically that it loses the attention of the listener and becomes meaningless.
In fact, you could listen to the opener, “Preach,” and you would practically have listened to the entire album. While the record does its best to cover up how middling it is, other than a couple of standouts (“Inla” and “Danger” specifically), there really isn’t much to hear. There is little to no depth in the songwriting and the album relies heavily on Walden’s performance, rather supplementing it. None of it is awful, but none of it is particularly good either.
So, with all of that being said, let’s go back to those Panic! At the Disco comparisons I made earlier. As much as I’ve harped on the flaws within
Sting, I did mention that despite its shallowness, it
can be fun. So if Emarosa is on the same trajectory as Panic! At the Disco was, and we look at how
that turned out, this album might just be worth a spin… ‘cause let me tell you, it’s probably going to get worse before it gets any better, if it ever does.
