Review Summary: The Title brings their infectious electronica pop straight from their bedrooms to your headphones.
With a fanbase so far comprised of mainly 16-year-old angst, it's music that you want to hate but can't help getting into. As lead singer Nick Esposito sings on "Oceans", "I wanna write words that move / make your heart skip beats / and if I can't do that / at least you'll tap your feet"
Oh Mr. Esposito, tap our feet we do.
Despite utilizing a few tools of the trade out of the Hollywood/Disney musical playbook -- namely, Antares Autotune -- The Title's tunes hardly feel fake or overproduced. Moreover, the band faithfully reproduces the sound live, often times going above and beyond the original arrangement, composing guitar and live drum tracks for what was [on the CD] entirely digital.
The self-produced album hooks you with the instrumental intro track that practically demands some part of your body be moving and a smile to crack through your lips. The first song, "Fading", is sincere and heartfelt as Esposito is able to take somewhat corny lyrics and apply just enough charm and honesty to make them relatable to almost everyone's teenage years. He carries a similar trend through almost every track on the disc, and despite the screaming-tween appeal, the subject and attitude of the lyrics are mature enough to appeal to older audiences as well.
For example, "Your Best, Your Last" is an extremely honest account about sexual apprehensions, but manages to stay very clean and younger members of the band's audience may not even pick up on the song's true subject matter, older listeners can in fact follow - and relate to - the song's narrative quite well. The other exception to the record's otherwise upbeat mantra is "Last Song", which is a rather embittered farewell song to an ex, which sounds very much like the lovechild of Mayday Parade and P!ATD.
While The Title is certainly not for everyone, they have many songs available on their MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/thetitlenj) so give them a listen or two -- even if this isn't usually your kind of thing, this might just strike your chord.
