Review Summary: Sometimes gems are hidden in plain view.
The Revere is a 3 piece indie rock band from Warrington PA…The Revere – who the hell are these guys? I accidentally came across this album
The Great City while recommendation surfing on Amazon, and found that the entire album was available for free download and figured I might as well take a listen. I have to say; I stumbled upon a gem of an album in the depths of Amazon’s MP3 store.
The Great City is one of the most impressive rock albums I have heard in quite some time, and is an album that definitely slid under the radar and was entirely overlooked by the masses.
The Great City tells the story of the dreams of different people who are all called upon to follow an old man to some destination unknown. I’m not usually sold on concept albums – but
The Great City does a damn good job of weaving all of these songs together producing a concept that hooks you at the beginning and keeps you until the very end. The album starts off urgently with a Fall of Troy-esque opening guitar riff that grabs your attention and opens your ears in preparation for what is coming next. “Sleep is a Celebration” is probably one of the best openers for an album that I can think of in any recent time – and serves notice that The Revere are going to bring the musical ambition and talent to party for the tale told on
The Great City
Unfortunately – the opener sets the bar so high that the rest of the album seems to fall short in comparison. That being said, the other 10 tracks are pretty solid and stand quite well on their own merit. The more I spin this record, the more I truly appreciate each track and each has grown on me tremendously. The storytelling is great and the production quality is actually quite high for a debut album from a band that doesn’t even have 700 fans on Facebook.
The vocals are pretty enjoyable – I liken it to Fair to Midland during their more aggressive points – and I would even say that Fair to Midland could be one of the bands that The Revere draw some inspiration from; which is definitely not a bad thing by any means. Instrumentally the band falls into the rock/post hardcore department with riffs that are usually energetic and urgent throughout the album.
The few drawbacks are what you would expect from a newer band – sometimes the ambition is just a little too much and comes off as all over the place and not as cohesive as it could be; and several songs are hard to distinguish from one another. Overall though;
The Great City is an excellent debut, and serves notice that The Revere are a band that possess a lot of potential to position themselves nicely for the future – and they have me looking forward to part 2 of this story. I definitely recommend checking it out; especially since it is still free to download from the Amazon MP3 store...what do you have to lose?
