Review Summary: The Sun and the Moon is a terrible attempt from The Bravery to comeback from the remains of the new wave revivalism; completely mindless, boring, standard mainstream rock with Endicott's vocals worse than ever.
The Killers' proteges are back with their latest release, The Sun and the Moon. Many bands come back from a hiatus to find that their genre is in shambles, or gone, as a whole; and this, unfortunately happened to The Bravery. With the New Wave revivalism in full swing, they stumbled out of the gate with their self-titled debut, and gained a small fanbase that praised everything they did. When they returned to music this year, they found New Wave revivalism hanging on by a string; while The Killers' even had dubbed down the New Wave sound with their release Sam's Town, so The Bravery dropped a lot of their synthesizers and keyboards with their latest release and picked up a guitar. But is that a good thing? Taking ideas from The Smiths, The Killers, and U2, The Bravery patched together this pitiful attempt at an album.
The problem with music is that there's not many bands who can be unique. This band dropped New Wave almost as a whole, and now blend it with typical mainstream rock. While their debut was not all that good, they managed to be a little bit unique and inventive. Since there wasn't too many bands that went to the New Wave revivalism, The Bravery and The Killers stood out on their own, but now they sound like everybody else. They aren't at the stage in their career where they can make music that makes them happy; they still have to please the radio, but in their case, it may have dropped their credibility, and talent.
Time Won't Let Me Go is the first single off of this album, and is a good choice; it's the only song I can tolerate without wanting to jab my eyeballs out. Arguably the only song that I can tolerate Sam Endicott's tiring and whiny voice that he managed to discover with The Sun and the Moon. The keyboards are surprisingly present in this song as well. It's about as close to old Bravery as this album gets. The song still is lacking in many areas though; filled with noise-lyrics like the "ba-bap-bap-ba" bridge, the song is more like a light, purpose-less song. Not to mention the chorus just seems to knaw into my head. Time Won't Let Me Go is easily the best song on The Sun and the Moon, which isn't saying much.
There's so many songs I could qualify as some of the worst ever. The song Believe echoes of Public Service Announcement from The Bravery debut, but it quickly falls short. Starting out with a guitar introduction with some simple keyboard loops, Endicott starts off singing in no time. The chorus is eerily reminescent of An Honest Mistake, with a keyboard loop that is the same from An Honest Mistake.
The Ocean is another one that's painful to listen to; almost all acoustic, Sam Endicott sings mostly untouched, and that's not much of a good thing. The chorus is odd, repetitive, and a bit off-tempo. This Is Not The End is filler that is a quick passover, Endicott's vocals are worse than ever, and the guitars are pitiful in this song. Bad Sun sounds like a kids tune off of Kidz Bop, and Endicott sounds eerily close to Robert Smith of the Cure in this song. The Dandy (Rock) features vocals which I'm pretty sure aren't related to Endicott in any way; but that's not a good thing, the vocals are nasty bad and the guitars are pitiful.
Easily, I could continue to go on about how bad The Sun and the Moon is. But, I'll save you the stress and let you know the only song that is listenable is Time Won't Let Me Go. The songs are bland, Endicott's vocals are worse than ever, and the guitarists are not good in any stretch of the imagination. This was a huge letdown for me; because I enjoyed certain songs off of their debut album like An Honest Mistake or Public Service Announcement. Best idea, is to leave The Sun and the Moon on the shelf at Best Buy and download Time Won't Let Me Go; that is, if you enjoyed their debut album, and have a bit of money laying around that you would like to burn.
