Review Summary: Leaving me misty-eyed.
Falling Up is one of the more schizophrenic and dividing rock bands of the day, especially in the Christian circles. Some absolutely love and laud all of their material, even the failure of
Crashings, some disregard
Dawn Escapes (the band’s best straightforward alt-metal album) as
Crashings Pt. II, some hate their rock material and prefer the more experimental stuff, some do the exact opposite. But there’s no denying that the band has kept listeners on their toes with every album, but unfortunately, the glass tends to be half empty with this approach for the group. Project 86 is another band that’s changed styles from album to album but always retained a core sound and thus stability. RED and Breaking Benjamin are both fantastic rock groups that have kept a core identity while still evolving and throwing in some new tricks. Falling Up have never truly had that core, even for the great releases in DE and EL.
Crashings was a nu-metal band with very little potential struggling to form an identity,
Dawn Escapes was a much improved release that was still plagued by some of the issues of
Crashings,and
Exit Lights, while a good remix project, found a band struggling between a rock edge and an atmospheric, electronic sheen that had always factored partially into past releases but never fully taken dominance. I wasn’t really sure exactly what to expect going into Captiva, especially after the largely atmospheric “Islander” from EL.
The greatest point of contention for the group have typically been the vocals of Jesse Ribordy, vocals that have always sounded more suitable for pop punk. On
Captiva, they sound slightly more subdued. Jesse is much calmer throughout and as a result, the vocals are lower and bring more of a quiet presence than the energetic and occasionally grating visitation on the past releases. It’s a little bit to get used to, especially because sometimes he sounds a little bored, but it’s overall tolerable and even a little enjoyable. There are no screams present this time, which is hit-and-miss for me. Yes, they were awful on the first release, but they showed a whole lot of progression on the second effort, and it would’ve been interesting to see further evolution on
Captiva. Guitar-wise, it’s a little depressing honestly. When it’s there, it’s great, don’t misunderstand, but it’s too often resorted to power chords in the chorus, bridge, and maybe the outro. I don’t mean power chord riffs, I just mean bashing maybe three chords in a different order. This is frankly a bad decision because some of the best parts of the past releases was the guitarwork. Bass? Never, there is absolutely no stand-out bass performance, and the bass even cropped up a little on tracks like “Flights” from
Dawn Escapes. It’s similar for the drums, they don’t ever do anything truly noteworthy (with the exception of “A Guide To Marine Life”), when there was plenty of proof they could occasionally do it throughout past releases.
“A Guide To Marine Life” and “Hotel Aquarium” are easily the best songs of the album and do open it well, though it’s misleading for the painfully average majority of the record. The former possesses a soaring chorus complete with a fairly strong vocal performance, eerie verses with a flustering drum beat and shimmering electronics, and an absolutely stunning bridge. The latter has some of the best dual guitar chemistry from the band, bouncing between a fleeting, high lead line and crunchy, pounding Drop D power chords and palm-muting. It’s one of the only rock tracks on the album, though it is fairly more subdued than previous tracks like “Searchlights” or “Escalates”. Still, it’s not a bad song at all and Jesse sounds great here, evoking a whole lot of passion and delivering some fairly solid lyrics. Six songs later, we are greeted with the second and final rock track of the record, known as “Murexa”. Odd title aside, this song actually features some of the greatest Falling Up riffs out there, the guitars are absolutely stunning throughout. There’s octaves, dead notes, power chords, palm muting, and pure single note riffing fun. This track pulsates with a real energy missing from the majority of the album and will surely wake the listener up, especially with the catchy, breakneck-speed sing-a-long chorus.
Understand that none of this is quite as bad as
Crashings, but it’s not much better at all. “Goodnight Gravity” finds the band catering to many a critic’s wishes and actually going in a pop/punk direction, and put simply, it absolutely sucks. The electronics are cheesy, the guitars are ripped straight from a Relient K record, the lyrics are atrocious, and the chorus is repeated so many times it hurts. You’ll know from about the first ten seconds of “Maps” that it’s just a generic worship tune that fails to gain any ground whatsoever and sounds about as exciting as a worship song from Kutless. Worship ballads can be done right, as proven by the likes of RED, Underoath, P86, For Today, Disciple, Breaking Benjamin, so this could’ve used so much more work. Everything else is just so boring it hurts. “Helicopters” sounds ripped from a generic puzzle game, “Arch To Antilles” and “The Dark Side of Indoor Trackmeets” try and fail to replicate the perfection of “Contact” from DE. It’s honestly pathetic.
Lyrically, it’s obvious the band are Christians, but not in a glaring sense like Kutless. They are ambiguous enough for anybody to relate to them and I especially enjoy “Hotel Aquarium”. While the song is written as a cry for God’s breath of life, it could also simply be an anthem for the end of loneliness. Honestly, it just seems like the band was putting out an album to put out an album, though I did get a bit of a sense of Weezer syndrome. If Jesse wanted to make this the Jesse Ribordy show, arrogantly or not, he should’ve just gone off on a side project and not dragged the name of Falling Up and consequently the musicians down with him. If you’re a Falling Up fan, the standouts are well worth your time, but as a whole, this is painfully average.
