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Review Summary: One of the funnest albums you will listen to. I rarely find an album that is strictly fun. There are many energetic albums, many happy albums, but nothing that bursts at the seems with "fun". The reason for this, I believe, is simply that many artists focus on the pinpoint accuracy of every move, every feeling, every sample, sound, and beat, so much that they forgot to have fun. Friendly Fires' sophomore effort brings upon that pinpoint accuracy and that focus into a larger concept: fun.
In [i]Pala[i/], Friendly Fires attack a colorful concept; one with life trickling down a waterfall in a Hawaiian forest, while you sit at the beach with a multi-colored drink and a lover at your side. The concept is portrayed consistently throughout the album and carries that pinpoint accuracy; each single sound perfectly snuck in to create that feeling of absolute passion, joy, and fun. The first track titled "Live Those Days Tonight" serves as an epic in itself, with banging toms and old, 90's style synths building and building consistently to create an energy filled anthem. "Show Me Lights" provides a basic chord progression done many times before but with layers of samples, auxiliary percussion, and an incredibly catchy chorus to produce an atmosphere of long lasting fun in the vocalists' city of lights.
Even Pala's softer tracks still provide enough fun to maintain the colorful sound of the album. Title track "Pala" serves as the highlight of the album, giving the listener a taste of the wonder and magic that awaits on the island "Pala". Vocalist Ed McFarlane maintains a tender voice, breaching into his falsetto lightly almost drearily, even creating a seductive tone. Friendly Fire's focus is really put into play here; each buzzing synth building to create a surrounding sound of "Pala" by the surrounding chorus.
Although Friendly Fires give each song an immense amount of focus, they have a tendency to go overboard with it. "Blue Cassette" provides a catchy chorus with a fun drumline, but remains cluttered, messy, and over-layered. Normally, this would be the producer's fault, but Friendly Fires simply put TOO much in "Blue Cassette" for the song to grow and provide the same pitch perfect vibe of "Running Away" or "True Love". Even in "Live Those Days Tonight" it becomes extremely apparent that that was the song Friendly Fires worked the hardest on; perhaps too hard. Although this messiness adds an irritable quality to a few of the songs, it barely makes a difference. The album is so enjoyable in itself that the dozens of layers hardly matter. It's just fun as hell.
Friendly Fires have truly tried their best with Pala to create an album that captures all the focus and attention as their previous effort, but this time adding as much fun as they can. Did they accomplish it? Who cares. This *** is the funnest album I've ever listened to.
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Album Rating: 4.0 | Sound Off
My first ever review. My sentences are a bit long, and it may seem a bit short, but I would adore some
constructive criticism. Thanks! Oh, and ignore that accidental mistake when trying to italicize. Haha
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Good review, though you can afford to cut some "fun"s out, maybe describe what that means in more detail
I have a weird soft spot for FF
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Great review
There seems to be much action in the review section
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There are a couple of immediate spelling issues that need to be sorted out so I'll post those first
and address the review as a whole afterwards:
...but nothing that bursts at the seems with "fun"
Seams is misspelt, you could also consider removing what I believe to be unneccessary quotation
marks.
...so much that they forgot to have fun
Forgot should be forget.
In [i]Pala[i/], Friendly Fires attack...
Coding error.
The review itself is well written and mostly enjoyable to read. You obviously know the music well, a
fact that is reflected in your analysis, and this helps you make a well structured argument. Your
vocabulary could possibly do with improvement, but in my experience that naturally grows as you
continue to write. You use words such as colourful and fun a lot, and while these are accurate
descriptors of the music, excessive repetition of the same words becomes a bit grating to read.
All in all it's a decent first review and I'd definitely be interested in reading more from you,
especially if you continue reviewing albums such as this one. Personally, I'd prefer to see an
expanded recommendation section, it's really quite easy for an album like this one and doesn't take
much time, but again that's something you can improve on next time.
I guess all I can ask you to do right now to this review is to fix those errors and I'd be more than
happy to give you your first pos.
| | | Album Rating: 2.5
I enjoyed the review. A few things, though:
"In Pala[i/], Friendly Fires attack a colorful concept; one with life trickling down a
waterfall in a Hawaiian forest, while you sit at the beach with a multi-colored drink and a lover at
your side. "
1) Code error, though you probably noticed that.
2) That semi-colon should really be a colon as the second clause is explaining the first.
3) The rhythm of this sentence feels so disjointed (and yes, we're diving all the way to talking
about rhythm, consider it a complement). "one with..." and what follows strikes me as a singular
idea, yet it's drawn out over three emphasis (I don't know the correct word for this, I apologise.)
What I mean by this is that the one idea flows much like your standard list. Personally I'd phrase
this segment as:
"Friendly Fires attack a colourful concept in [i]Pala: one where life itself trickles down a
Hawaian waterfall as you sit on the beach with your lover on one side and a fluorescent drink on the
other"
As well as smoothing out any jarring punctuation you used (commas are useful but they can be the
enemy of flow), this also makes your description more vivid by hinting at the placement of
what you describe and pays homage to the central idea (i.e. the idea of life flowing through the
record) by including "itself" to draw the phrase more attention.
Little, tiny and infuriatingly nit-picking things, I'm sure (sorry!), but it's this kind of stupid
attention to detail that separates a great review from a merely good review.
edit: gah! I don't know what the code tags are on this site so I can't isolate the code in the
quote, but oh well.
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burst at the SEAMS
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Aside from the aforementioned issues, this is not half shabby for a first review. I enjoyed their debut, so will get around to this one day.
No votes.. Fuck it, have a pos.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0 | Sound Off
Thanks a ton for the criticism. Really, I'm overjoyed to see these comments. Hopefully the next time I write a review, I'll have a much larger perception of what I'm doing. Thanks.
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
sadly overlooked album. pretty great stuff
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new album out on August 16th
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