Review Summary: Twinkle hard.
5 of 5 thought this review was well writtenSo,
Algernon Cadwallader just broke up. Bummer. Like their cohorts before them, they stuck around for a few years leaving behind a limited catalogue and developing a passionate following in the process. I mean
really passionate. While Algernon were around, they provided any sweaty kid that cared to listen with a show in any smelly basement that cared to let them play, shouting their greasy faces off and basking in their unshowered glory. Never before has this reviewer seen such a devout fanbase for a band with such a short tenure. But as the genre suffers this blow, who will carry the torch? New Jersey duo, Dads, with their album
American Radass show that they can dazzle our ears with intricate guitar melodies and melt our hearts with intense catharsis with the best of them.
Every song on this album is teeming with pure, unbridled emotion. Dads leave the impression that they care because they
want to care. It's emotion for emotion's sake, and nothing is wrong with that. Between the fuzzed-up noisy onslaught of "Get To The Beach" and the slow burners like this album's 7-minute centerpiece "*** Twins", every feeling that each song portrays seems to exist on its own accord. Proclamations like "Turns out you're right / and I'm not sorry / blood, sweat and tears / that's what's keeping me here" show that this album is not burdened by emotion but rather celebrates it, boiling down to one of the most feel-good albums of the genre. Even in its moments of melancholy,
American Radass is never painful to listen to or bogged-down. As shown in "*** Twins" the lofty, paper-thin orchestration provides any sorrow that Dads' want to deliver with a vehicle in which to float into the hearts of whoever wants to listen. Nothing is strained, nothing is forced; everything is natural and everything is what it wants to be.
