Review Summary: This album might be the beginning of a new Yellowcard, one that is more serious, mature, and a all around better band.
Yellowcard is a band that, like others, got famous by making fun catchy mainstream pop punk music; thus producing two of the catchiest singles in the last years, “Ocean Avenue” and “Way Away”. However, Yellowcard, who targeted a pre-teen and teen audience, finally grew up. Lights and Sounds demonstrates that they can write more meaningful stuff and that they can play serious music. With this album they have gone over their “Simple Plan-phase” (although they were better than Simple Plan from the start) and stepped into real music.
I got to be honest, I really enjoyed Ocean Avenue. It got me pumped up so I listened to it while I played videogames. When I first heard that a new Yellowcard album was coming I got really exited. So I got the album and put it on my CD player and pressed play. The album started with "Three Flights Up" which was kind of a surprise. This is a beautiful piano and violin intro that kind of makes you wonder if you bought the right album. When I listened to this I was thrilled. The violin in Yellowcard had always intrigued me; I loved how it sounded in the previous albums and wanted to hear more of it. Lights and Sounds granted me that wish. The violin is more active and even gets a solo in the end of "Holly Wood Died" to close the album.
After the intro is over, the first single, "Lights and Sounds" begins. Now this is the Yellowcard I remembered, fun, catchy, fast and full of energy. A great pop-punk song similar to “Way Away”, but with better lyrics.
By explaining the first two tracks I mean to demonstrate that this album, although going in a different direction, still have some trademark older Yellowcard songs. Beside the single, two other examples of this are the songs ''Sure Things Falling" and "Rough Landing, Holly". The first is the worst songs of the album and really pulls it down. Musically the track is weak and unbalanced, and when you add lyrics like, “I’ve been up late writing books all about heroes and crooks”, you just have an awful song.
One of the biggest improvements of the band is the lyrics of the songs. This time the band focused their lyrics on society, ideas, and life more than cliché relationship stuff. They aren’t even remotely close to Rise Against, but the change is noticeable when you compare it to the lyrics of their previous albums. The relationship-love lyrics are there too, but much better done and enjoyable. The song that reflects this change the most is "Two Weeks from Twenty", part of the lyrics goes:
“And then you hear them say that miles away we lost another one that we sent with a gun, they are going to miss him he was two weeks from twenty, and there’s still no shame from the man to blame.”
Musically Lights and Sounds outshines all their previous albums. The music in this is more complex, in contrast to the more simplistic sound in their older stuff. It can be noticed that Yellowcard seems to have been experimenting with an Alternative sound. A heavy Alternative influence is present in a lot of the songs. The more noticeable are "City of Devils", "Grey" and "Words, Hands, Hearts". It is like taking Switchfoot and Jimmy Eat World and mixing it with a some pop-punk. This album gets a 3.7/5 in musical variety, it has enough variety to prevent it from getting boring, but not enough to prevent this from being one of the cons of the album.
Vocally and instrumentally this album is excellent. Ryan Key’s vocals are almost perfectly in tune with the music, with very few sub-par moments. The guitars are good, with great moments throughout the album, but a little inconsistent. The inconsistency is noticeable in "Sure Things Falling". Like always, drumming is Yellowcard’s forte, reaffirming the fact that Longineu W. Parsons III is one of the most underrated drummers in music. The violin is flawless and goes perfectly with the music.
This album might be the beginning of a new Yellowcard, one that is more serious, mature, and a all around better band. If they continue growing like they did on this album they have a good chance to make one superb record. Lights and Sounds is excellent, but still has a couple of flaws that can be corrected in future releases.
Top 5 Tracks (in order):
Holly Wood Died
Grey
City of Devils
Lights and Sounds
Two Weeks from Twenty
Album Rating: 4/5
