Review Summary: Polar Bear Club's new sounds tries to go for a more melodic approach, but falls flat on it's face with poor vocal delivery
In the first 15 seconds of “Death Chorus,” everything is just what one would expect from a Polar Bear Club record. Guitar feedback and a gritty bassline bombard the speakers in what seems to be a buildup to vocalist Jimmy Stadt’s signature gravelly delivery on opening track “Blood Balloon.” But Stadt’s voice is no longer strong, grizzly, and extroverted. Instead, it has been substituted for a clean, melodic, and more sincere delivery. While this may seem like the move of a band attempting to gain a broader audience and go more “mainstream,” the vocal change was a result of Stadt losing his voice on tour and his never recovering. On Polar Bear Club’s tumblr account, Stadt says even after recovery: “my voice was a little cleaner and singing like I used to sing was simply not an ability I possessed anymore.” Unfortunately, Stadt’s new delivery has a much smaller vocal range than ever before which destined “Death Chorus” to become a boring and uninspired mess of an album.
One of the large problems that “Death Chorus” faces is Stadt does not have the vocal range to achieve what he is going for on many songs. One example of this is the slow ballad “Siouxsie Jeanne.” The guitar in the background is very soft, melodic, and soothing and yet still being peircing when needed. Unfortunately, Stadt seems to be straining his voice at many times in the song and derails a song in which could have been an album highlight into a trainwreck. The vocal strain with the soothing, almost atmospheric guitar does not juxtapose in a way that is in any way flattering, but instead sounds grating and flat.
Many tracks even fail to do anything to catch the listeners attention. Lead track “Blood Balloon” does nothing to pull the listener in as the vocals fall flat at the most inopportune of times while the melody wasn’t to catchy in the first place. Polar Bear Club had always been a band that blended hardcore elements into their music to mask the occasional lack of catchy guitar and bass melodies. “Death Chorus” has eliminated most the hardcore tropes from Polar Bear Club’s music, exposing and highlighting all of the flaws in the album which may not have been as easily noticeable in album’s past. The biggest flaw that was highlighted was Polar Bear Club’s lack of melodic vision.
Past songs such as “Killin’ It” were so catchy in the past because the vocal delivery of lines like “why’d you crack like knives in the pavement” were backed by gritty, grainy guitar and bass as well as loud, pulsing drums in which combined for the perfect melodic combination. The melody was memorable because it sounded gunky and sticky. Each of the “Oh oh oh”’s stuck out so much that it was hard to forget. In songs such as “For Show,” the entire chorus is a string of forgettable “Oh oh oh”s with drums that are muffled and almost inaudible, combining for one of the most forgettable songs on the entire album.
There are plenty of bands that have been able to successfully make the transition that Polar Bear Club has gone through on “Death Chorus,” most notably punk bands Hostage Calm and Saves the Day. The reason why those bands were able to transition to more pop centric music so successfully is because their strong suit has always been their usage of pop tropes within their music rather than their punk and hardcore tropes. Listening to Hostage Calm’s “Please Remain Calm,” it’s almost difficult to remember that this band used to be a hardcore band because of how well they’re able to produce great pop tracks with some fantastic vocal hooks. “Death Chorus” is in many ways very similar to “Please Remain Calm,” but the huge difference being the vocal capacity of the singers. Hostage Calm’s vocalist Tom Chiari’s vocal range is so expansive that he is able to effectively entrap great vocal melodies on songs such as “Patriot.” However, Stadt’s vocal range is so limited that it inhibits Polar Bear Club from being able to encapsulate their main goal: making a melodic and catchy album.
Despite the huge melodic blunders on many of the tracks, there are a few great tracks and room for hope for Polar Bear Club in their future releases. “WLWYCD” is a rare example of successfully encapsulating what Polar Bear Club unsuccessfully attempted to do melodically in their other tracks. The Stadt’s vocals are vibrant and bouncy along with the backing guitars and is one of the few tracks where the drums truly stand out. Moreover, despite a few vocal miscues at parts, “Upstate Mosquito” is able to be one of the more pounding, pulsing, and emotional songs on the entire album. This track proved that while Polar Bear Club may need a good polish to fix things up melodically, they’re still very good songwriters. Even when their songs fail they are not bad songs. When their songs fail, as is most tracks on the album, they simply seem boring and uninspired rather than poorly made and tasteless.
