Review Summary: The most comfortable Filter has ever sounded... but certainly not the best Filter has ever sounded.
If you search for "The Trouble with Angels" on Amazon.com, the first item for sale in the results is not Filter's underrated 2010 album, but instead a dvd copy of a 1966 movie of the same name. This movie stars someone named Rosalind Russell and its cover depicts a duo of awkward looking nuns, one of whom is wielding a shotgun. Perhaps this movie is some forgotten classic that has just so happened to slip past young college kids like myself, but its apparent obscurity and seemingly unintentional hilarity outranking a recent Filter album seems to illustrate how far the band has, unfortunately, fallen from the pop culture radar. Indeed, when watching the contemporary incarnation of this band play (excellent and furious) shows to mostly empty crowds, it only makes it harder to believe that his band once was selling platinum albums and knocking a major hit singles out of the park. That being said, it is also true that Filter has always seemed like the underdog band. Richard Patrick could be viewed as sort of little brother figure to someone like Trent Reznor, for instance. No one ever seriously expected Filter to release anything with the artistic merit and alternative metal/industrial muscle of "The Downward Spiral", but there was something special about the way "Short Bus" sounded like a bunch of pissed off kids with drug/alcohol problems and an obsession with Broken-era Nine Inch Nails going into the studio for a couple weeks and banging out a record that was downright enjoyable, despite the fact that it didn't really seem like they knew what they were doing. Returning to the virtually ignored "The Trouble With Angels", retrospect has shown that the reason that album was so enjoyable was because, for a good portion of the record, it channeled that same underdog spirit that was available in spades on "Short Bus", except now the musicians had a career's worth of experience. It was an album that was fun to listen to, and it rocked chaotically in a way that didn't feel the least bit contrived. On 2013's "The Sun Comes Out Tonight," contrivance, unfortunately, is the main issue. Filter has lost their underdog spirit.
What motivated Richard Patrick when writing "The Sun Comes Out Tonight"? It's hard not to say he's desperate for some of the long-gone mainstream recognition his band saw in the 90s. While the record is jam packed with the same knack for melody that he displayed on later Filter records, it's all so polished that it often ends up sounding flaccid and corporate. "Surprise", which is easily the bands most accessible track since "Take a Picture", sounds like a phoned-in appeal to the radio, as generic and contrived as anything I have heard this year. The song still holds some merit with it's ridiculously catchy melody, yet it feels like a cheap imitation of "Take a Picture" in the long run. "First You Break It" suffers many of the same flaws, except it's attempting to ape "God Damn Me" instead of "Take A Picture"... which of course doesn't go so well. Another one of the album's flaws is exemplified in "Burn It," which is a brainless hard rocker that sounds like anything you would hear on crappy rock radio stations these days, except they (almost annoyingly) tried to make it enjoyable with a sick, twisted solo that squirms and writhes interestingly enough that it nearly saves the song. Perhaps the worst offender on the album of all, however, is the lead single, "What Do You Say." It fails to be interesting in almost every way imaginable, and there is something cringe worthy about Richard Patrick shouting "Hey, hey, what do you say / it doesn't really matter 'cuz it's all the same." Geeze Rich, we knew you weren't the best lyricist, but couldn't you come up with something a little better than that? Interestingly enough, the song is supposedly about the way people's opinions have become sort of worthless in the age of the internet, because everyone is talking and no one is listening. This certainly could be an interesting topic for a song, but Richard completely fails at articulating the idea, and just winds up spouting what sounds like nonsense. Similar to this is "Self-Inflicted", which is a critique on the society that has created so many tragedies with mass shooters and whatnot, but the interesting topic is squandered when the lyrics are as vacantly predictable as possible- at least the music in it sounds good, though.
At this point, you may be surprised that the score at the top of the page is a 3.0 and not at least a point lower... and that is because the album does have some incredibly great moments as well. For starters, there is the opener, entitled "We Hate it When You Get What You Want," which hard rocking track with a bridge that comes out of nowhere and kills it. The song also boasts some interesting electronic elements and some impressive vocal effects. The title track contains a driving riff that sounds very different than anything else the band has ever written, and the song is brimming with an impressive amount of energy. "Take That Knife Out of My Back" is another stand out, and has what is perhaps the best chorus of any "hard" Filter song since "Hey Man Nice Shot." It may actually be as close as the band has ever come to replicating the ever elusive qualities of that song as well. Finally, the closing two tracks are impressive for how out of the box they are- at least for Filter. There isn't anything groundbreaking about the piano ballad of "It's My Time," but it's nice to see Richard flaunt his vocal talents and employ an instrument that he probably should have experimented with a long time ago. The song is packed with annoying cliches in the lyrics, but it's somber mood manages to be more convincingly genuine than many other moments on the record. Finally, there's "It's Just You," which has a ton of soft electronics which sound like they belong in a Postal Service song, but somehow the band makes it work. Richard shows off some pretty incredible hook making abilities with his vocals here, and the song winds up serving as a very effective closer.
In short, "The Sun Comes Out Tonight" is somewhat of a mixed bag. The truth is, Filter does sound good with their new approach. Patrick and his band have stepped out from behind the shadows of the 90s alterna-rockers that they were lumped with in their heyday and now look quite comfortable along the Chevelle's and Seether's of the music world, even if their music has become less genuine. Here, they don't sound as pissed off, and they definitely don't sound like underdogs appealing (in an interesting way) to some greater cultural movement. They just sound like a modern rock band with no frills and a decent knack for melody, and while their efforts are sometimes strangled by the records constant overproduction, it's hard to resist most of what the band has to offer here. I'll always appreciate the energy that fueled the older Filter records more than this, but this may be the most comfortable the band has ever sounded.
