Review Summary: Disappointingly, "Dark Is The Way, Light Is a Place" ends up sounding more like a better-produced version of an album a fourteen year old would write than a magnum opus.
Most good pop-punk music relies on three things: Good instruments, good vocals, good lyrics. If you want to throw in the "U2 aspect" that Anberlin have recently tried to cram into their music, then the fourth is production. Considering that, Anberlin is batting 0.500.
The most positive thing that I can say about this album is the Stephen Christian's voice is better than ever. Songs like "We Owe This To Ourselves" and "Closer" are the centerpieces of the "how did he just hit that note" quality that contributed to what made
Cities so fantastic, and that voice almost saves a number of the slower songs that clog up this album. At some points in the music you can tell that he's trying to sound like Bono ("Down", Depraved"), but you can usually look past it because he has the chops to do it. The only time his voice really makes the listener cringe is when he tries to power ballad-sing, but when he does that the song is usually already doomed. Unfortunately a good voice can't save bad music, and that's where the album begins to fall apart.
The two things that make this album as mediocre as it is are the boring instruments and the awful lyrics. You get to the chorus of a song like "Art of War", and the first thought is "did I write this song in the seventh grade?". Considering the amount of hype Stephen Christian inspired in interviews by talking about how personal the lyrics are, they sound like Good Charlotte lyrics:
"You're so good,
at what you think you do to me
There are words,
that don't belong.
Because of you,
I'll never write another love song."
"Who needs enemies when we've got friends like you?"
Some of these lyrics sound like things a pop-punk band composed of fourteen-year-olds would come up with. There's some extremely badly paced lines ("Are you keeping safe dis-tance" with "distance" being two half notes), and the entire "Take Me As You Found Me" is basically a list of cliches. Unfortunately, with the new fixation on slower-paced love songs, the instruments as well as the lyrics suffer profusely as a result. The positive thing is that the slow, dragging pace of the album makes it all the more satisfying when a truly explosive and amazing song (or more usually chorus) shows up like in the two only songs on the album that capture what we love about Anberlin: "Closer", and "Pray Tell" are two of the best songs of the year, and one can't help but wish that their punch had been more evident in the rest of the album. When those two songs come up it's almost like
Cities is poking its head out, and then vanishes with stinkers like "You Belong Here".
Last year Cal Lewis wrote in a review for this site "All Time Low prove they have too much pop and not enough punch". When listening to
Dark is the Way, Light is a Place", I couldn't get that line out of my head, because it summed up what I thought I'd never say about an Anberlin album. It's odd, because there are a few songs on this album that you have to download, but there are far too many I wish I hadn't wasted time listening to.
Pros:
Stephen Christian's voice is great
The production does what it can
There are some songs that rise to the magnum opus level we were promised
Cons:
Far too many power ballads
Awful lyrics
Bad pacing
Definitely download:
Pray Tell
Closer
We Owe This To Ourselves
