Review Summary: Another nail in Keith Buckley’s coffin.
While I hold the probably controversial opinion that Keith Buckley was the weakest link of Every Time I Die, his vocal delivery was inarguably a key factor in their sound. Coupled with mostly good/sometimes brilliant lyrics, a lot of charm, and questionable personal behavior, Keith was the quintessential front-man of a band that went up in flames in a manner befitting his volatile nature.
As you can see, I’m not a huge Keith Buckley fan, but it was hard not to at least be intrigued by the concept of Many Eyes. It was only a matter of time before the Buckley brothers would be climbing other mountains, and while Jordan beat his brother to the punch with an EP in 2023, Keith (shamelessly) made sure that his new band would release their debut album before Better Lovers released their debut in October. Not only that, but his new band’s membership pedigree would be the very envy of the community, and Keith would further evolve his act by adding (even cleaner) clean vocals to the mix. Sounds good so far, right?
The only problem is that
The Light Age kind of sucks.
Calling it outright bad is probably an exaggeration, but there is no question that
The Light Age is a categorically boring album. I’m not talking simple, I’m talking boring—like your hummus has no olive oil boring or you didn’t put salt on your French fries boring, or like a f*cking Bud Lite. In fact if this album were a food, it would probably be boiled chicken.
With the exception of “Harbinger” (which is a genuine banger),
The Light Age is a swampy slog of same-y riffs, same-y vocals and same-y songs. The lukewarm attempts at br00tal riffz are cliché at best and downright mind-numbing at worst. It doesn’t help that the album has an air of pomposity that makes it next to unpalatable for ninety percent of its runtime, and worse still are the many moments that shamelessly ape Every Time I Die’s musical foundation while having none of its charisma or allure.
Unfortunately nothing on the album is more turgid than Buckley himself. While his vocals are (mostly) passable, the clean vocals lack any personality and have been bleached of their raw and endearing features into an insipid shell of their former self. They’re not grating or discordant, but I’d almost rather they were, because listening to Buckley sound like an auto-tuned cock rock star is a less than comfortable experience.
I could go on, but I’ve rambled a bit too much—and I’ve probably made the album sound worse than it really is in the process. Unfortunately
The Light Age does not have enough redeeming qualities to be anything more than utterly forgettable. I’m not even going to try and make a comparison to Better Lovers because they are different bands—the fact of the matter is that this album is a half-baked mess of undercooked ideas that was probably rushed through the songwriting and release process solely to make a jab at Buckley’s former bandmates. I could be wrong, but the album is simply too dull for any other explanation to be feasible.
I’m not even saying that I wish this album were better than it was because I’m disappointed or something of that nature, I just think that the personnel involved are capable of writing music of much higher quality than this. I would probably be more forgiving if Many Eyes and
The Light Age didn’t take themselves so seriously, but they do—and for that Keith Buckley gets another nail in my proverbial coffin for him. I genuinely hope the next one is better than this, because if it gets any worse I’m going to have a f*cking field day.
