Review Summary: A bleeding heart creating bleeding ears.
The first song on this album, ‘El Paso’, is my first introduction to this band, and it certainly piques my interest. Unfortunately, the following album fails to live up to the cool grit and spaciness of the opening track. ‘El Paso’ is the black sheep on the album, and while it’s great as a standout opener to build hype, get ready for your hype to get squashed. Taking Back Sunday’s self-titled album is a letdown. It’s not terrible, it’s just kind of average and forgettable.
The album starts off decently with the first three loud, decently energetic songs, but directly after, the album takes a nosedive. We already knew that the band members were sick and weary due to their miserable, bleeding hearts revealed through their blatantly emo lyrics, but they just couldn’t resist shoving their mood in our face even further. An album that originally seemed decently passionate and energetic, ultimately rears its ugly head and starts crying. Tracks like ‘Who Are You Anyway?’ and ‘Since You’re Gone’ show the true heart of the album, with over-the-top whiny songs that not even the emo tag can justify. Songs are needlessly dramatic in the childish sense, and the singer often sounds like a crying child. I’m all for hearing a passionate take, but this guy clearly has problems.
There isn’t much else to say except that the band members could really use a trip to Disneyland (the happiest place on Earth). You see, the band is so focused on sounding depressed that their music suffers from it. Even when the songs have decently uplifting choruses and/or melodies, they usually outright ruin them with absurdly poor lyrics and unpleasant, awkward moaning. Although having an emotional delivery in one’s vocals can often make music more appealing, Adam Lazzara’s delivery is appalling, and leaves us screaming for it to stop. Like the band members, the music is self-destructive, and although they try so hard to get our attention, I’m afraid no one will want to listen to such a contemptible noise. Despite a few solid tracks, Taking Back Sunday’s self-titled effort is uninteresting, and blatantly depressing.
