Review Summary: A solid TSSF album that is consistent but nothing more
The Album I've Been Waiting for all year:
I've been a fan of the Story So Far since last year (really late) and what stuck to me about this band are the really good instrumentals and honest lyrics that use interesting wordplay and metaphors. It was a fresh new sound that I haven’t felt before after listening to bands like blink 182, New Found Glory, and other early 2000’s bands. That being said, Under Soil and Dirt became my favourite album because of it’s combination of genius instrumentals and solid lyrics. Blink 182 and New Found Glory are great bands but their instrumentals were never in the same complexity as TSSF and their lyrics weren’t as good. So after listening to this album, I tried to hear What You Don’t See (their 2nd album). What You Don't see is a solid follow up but isn't on par with USAD. What You Don't see however, isn't a bad album and it showcased an even darker sound with more exploration on the hardcore roots of the band. It even might have more complex instrumentation and slightly deeper lyrics than USAD however, the freshness and explosion of USAD still make it a better album plus you can’t beat High Regard, Swords and Pens, and States and minds/roam. So with the change in What You Don't See, I wanted to see the direction they were going in with their self-tiled.
Well, the direction I found was a combination of both albums. It doesn't sound as dark as What You Don't See but it doesn't sound as light as Under Soil and Dirt. It's in the middle. Is that a good thing? I don't know. The thing with this album is that only a few songs stand out due to the fact that only a few songs have good hooks and some of the vocal melodies sound similar. So what’s a positive in this album? Well one good part of this album is its consistency. You see, anyone can actually argue after listening to this album that all the songs are good solid pop punk songs and nothing more than that. This is true and it's actually a surprisingly rare factor in modern pop punk albums. Like with the Wonder Year's Greatest Generation, the album had some powerful songs individually like “I just want to sell out my funeral”, “The Devil in my Bloodstream, “Dismantling Summer”, and “Teenage Parents” but still have a few bad songs in it like “American Religion”, “A Raidance in Traffic”, and “Chaser”.
That being said, all the songs are good in TSSF’s self titled. The worst one for me is Phantom due to the fact that it didn’t have too much lyrics in it and I felt like the song was rushed since the chorus just repeated twice and ended right away. The song had more potential but it just didn’t fulfill it. There were though a few tracks that stood out that actually had newer elements to their sound. The best song in the album “Heavy Gloom” used an interesting bassline that sounds similar to “In Bloom” by Nirvana and most songs by TSSF never really start with a bassline like that so that was a nice change. I also liked “How You are”. It again started with a drum groove that isn’t necessarily pop punk, more bossa nova or samba like and it’s awesome. The bass is also prominent here so that’s really nice. “Smile” has a nice intro with a bit of a samba vibe in the drums and is a good starter to set the vibe for the album. “Solo” also does something different by starting out soft without too much heaviness ( a bit of an elder brother vibe) then adding distortion in the chorus. That song was really good but it was too short. The rest of the songs were good in the verses and choruses and especially the bridges. TSSF always know when to palm mute in the vamps and it sounds awesome. However a lot of these other songs don’t have good intros thus limiting their potential. This is really unusual because intros are usually the strength of TSSF examples such as Mt. Diablo, Empty Space, High Regard, Swords and Pens, Daughters, and the list goes on. This album didn’t have a lot of good intros that are memorable. The best intro is probably heavy gloom’s. An example of a song that could’ve been better with a good intro is “Mock”. After hearing the preview of the song, I thought it would be the best song. However, the intro sucked and thus the song fell back. Every other part of the song was good except for the intro and if the intro was good, the track might’ve made it’s way to my top TSSF tracks.
An element I would like to touch on that I like with the album are the fast vocal melodies. It sounds like rapping at some songs and it’s kinda cool. The one song on What You Don’t See that did that was “Bad Luck” and I felt like they took that direction in this album in terms of vocal melodies and that’s nice. It makes me bob my head and due to this “rapping” feel, lots of the lyrics rhyme and it just feels really good. However, even if it’s a nice direction, it was done too much and maybe could’ve just been done in less than half of the songs. A final flaw with this album is that the lyrics are still about bashing the same girl being bashed with the other albums. I mean fine, Parker, maybe you still haven’t gotten over her or maybe that’s what the fans want but you’re already kinda famous enough to probably hang with other girls which shouldn’t make love difficult anymore. I mean Front Porch Step got with girls n he’s way uglier. With that being said, I would give it a 3.8 (ignore the score above since I can't go above a 3.5) and this is a good score due to consistency, new elements added instrumentally, and the rapping vibe. Its shortcomings are the fact that the rapping vibe was used too much, there aren’t a lot of hooks, some songs are too short, and the lyrical content is just the same as their old stuff.
