Review Summary: but in spirit only
These are a sampling of songs with a lot of potential that are let down by what is effectively lazy songwriting. Many very promising elements that rarely, almost never really come together into more than the sum of their parts and are usually let down by perplexing decisions in structure and song arrangement. To caveat, I generally avoid using 'lazy' to describe art since it's become a bit of a catch-all for anything that doesn't quite fire on all cylinders, but when there are so many baffling songwriting decisions that mire nearly every song on an album, it becomes a bit difficult to know how else to describe it.
Point in case, opener 'Restless' is a great buildup of tension but turns out to be, in effect, a 2-minute filler track -- which still *could have been great* had it lead directly into the more up-tempo and album highlight 'Aint It Sweet', were 'Aint It Sweet' not robbed of basically all momentum by a pointless electric drum sample opener.
'Any Means' and 'Sorrow Machine' never go anywhere really interesting, choosing instead to remain fairly forgettable. 'Lead Foot' loops on repeat a nice acoustic-y guitar vamp that overstays its welcome by a vast margin, going on and on for 2 minutes underpinned by some very bland and basic lead guitar ambience before the band decides to shake things up with a single (lazy) chorus, and then the aforementioned guitar vamp to finish the song off, where they can't even bother to write an actual ending, opting for a fade out instead -- 'Sorrow Machine' ends with a fade out as well (two sequential songs ending in fades is a cardinal sin of album arrangement, in my personal opinion), but the rest of the song doesn't really inspire either, laden with an initially-engaging-but-quickly-repetitive snare-bass-and-tom drum section (think mewithoutyou, if mewithoutyou didn't have a sense of urgency), with a tepid chorus.
'A Little of Myself' is pretty entirely lacking in dynamics, opting for a rather vanilla rock progression with a little interweaving of atmospheric hazy guitarwork - the vocal melody doesn't seem to really know where to go or what to do to elevate chorus from verse. 'Closer to God', another high point, develops nicely, building instrumentation up from a rather simple guitar progression then reinforced by a driving distorted bass and drum arrangement -- but, again, doesn't quite figure out where to go for the chorus, merely inverting its rather already simplistic two-note progression from the verses -- which, again, overstays its welcome in the second verse anyway -- and then a rather lame 'quiet' outro with that same opening guitar progression.
Closer 'With You in Spirit' is 2/3ds of an excellent song, but makes the inexplicable decision to nosedive into a sedate, boring bridge/outro, and never revisit the dramatic catchiness of the chorus, bringing the album to an unfortunately appropriate anticlimax. The absolute pinnacle of the album is easily mid-point 'Believe the Hype' which opens strong, doesn't waste time getting some gas behind the rhythm, and has an excellent pre-chorus build up to a deliciously cathartic chorus -- but even this song hits the bridge, doesn't seem to know what to do to remain engaging, and peters out almost immediately after.
The band is clearly talented and still capable of really interesting music but like need to stop either overthinking things, or give each song just a little more time in the incubator.
