Review Summary: Indie alt rock is as indie alt rock does.
Indie alt rockers “All the Day Holiday” are based out of Cincinnati Ohio, but I’ll give them credit for pulling together more of an international soundscape than I had prepared myself for. I’ll also give them credit for having a more polished sound considering this is their freshman effort. They certainly have put together a package that is reminiscent of more accomplished acts. It’s pretty obvious that this is a band made up of artists that have been around the block a time or two which Wikipedia quickly confirmed for me.
Things We've Grown to Love is chock full of light, urgent almost ethereal guitar work. Tracks like “Autumn”, “La Voyage”, “2000 Winters” and “Atmosphere” call to mind bands like U2, The Shins or Foals. Crooning provided by Daniel Simmons is good and strong, never wavering from a clearly present purpose that eludes me on some level. I’d call the drum and bass work adequate, dutifully doing their job but never stealing the spot light. Unfortunately there are just so many filler tracks constantly killing any momentum the clearly superior tracks build that it becomes a chore to really get to the end of the album.
A perfect example of where this group tends to go slightly wrong would be the title track. It sounds so much like The Avett Brothers' Kick Drum Heart (released the same year) but it just doesn't have the pop that made the latter a small hit. I hate to kick sand in the faces of this bands fan base but realistically The Things We've Grown to Love is a tier two album. It’s a decent enough album and I recommend Alt rock fans definitely give it a spin but I’m betting anyone who doesn't claim this genre as their “go to” will find it lacking.
While this really is a decent album peppered with some truly good songs I find it ultimately uninspired and just a half step behind many of their contemporaries. I wanted to like this album, I really did, but I’m just not wired to love the generic radio rock sound that pads half this album.
