Tv/Tv
With TV/TV’s latest release, Not Enough Red, out June 30, and available on iTunes, TV/TV have quickly proved they’re here and are not going away anytime soon. Appearing on many shows such as MTV’s, The Hills, and The Real World, the New York new wave rockers are continuing to impress. Just a few years ago, they were jamming in their New York City apartments but in 2009, they’ve grown to play the Smart Punkstage on Van’s Warped Tour. From pianos to the prestigious Highline Ballroom, it is a solid bet to say that TV/TV will be headlining the Madison Square Garden in no time.
Not Enough Red is absolutely fantastic. Produced by Bleu (Jonas Brothers, Boys Like Girls,Hanson, Ace Enders) and Mark Needham (The Killers, Bloc Party, Iglu and Hartly and Metro Station), Not Enough Red has some of the best production I’ve heard from a rock EP ever. It is very easy to attach the ‘rock’ tag to any song with some guitars and drums, but I can assure you that this EP rocks. From production to musicianship, TV/TV’s sophomore effort is absolutely flawless. It proves that there is more than just new age pop punk in 2009.
My favorite song on the five-track effort is “Small Time.” It defines their drive towards being the leaders of the present state of rock.This song declares how Not Enough Red is going to be the EP of the year. The producer’s had fun with vocal effects, and the guitarists fit in eccentric yet mainstream leads. Throughout “Small Time,”there is a mainstream new-age rock vibe blended with an 80s rock twist.
One thing I really enjoy about TV/TV is their song introductions. They engage the audience, and prepare for the powerful sequence of events to follow. These songs will absolutely “pop” in a live setting. Their introductions bring such intensity and allow singer/guitarist Josh Ocean to warm up the audience for their powerful choruses.
Maturing from their previous release, “Something To Get Excited About,” the New Yorkers have lost some of their pop-esque roots in pursuit of a modern and original rock sound. I was rather impressed with their 2007 effort. Their former sound was more of their pop-punk roots formed in their former high school bands. But now, they have gained a solid sound that will impress a gym full of high school kids, or an arena full of rockers.
Departing New York for the next few years, TV/TV is going out to support their music on tour. They’re currently on Van’s Warped Tour for the summer, followed by a UK tour in the fall. The band has grown to be an international act. Not Enough Red proves that the sky is not even a limit for TV/TV. With the digital television transition complete, your television sets are ready to pop with TV/TV.
Review By Blogcritics.org
Artist: Tv/Tv
EP: Not Enough Red [2009]
Genre: Rock / Pop Punk
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/tvtv
-Track List-
1. Small Time 2:50
2. Fire Island Freakout 3:01
3. Good Cop Bad Cop 3:56
4. Turn Me On 3:11
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All Time Low
Over the last year, All Time Low is a band name that has been on the tip of the tongue of just about every pop-punk fanatic. Between wearing the crown of Alternative Press’ band of the year, directly supporting genre titans Fall Out Boy on tour and selling out multiple headline tours of their own, the Maryland-based group stretched their popularity to new heights. Armed with a wicked sense of humor – on and off stage – the quartet also packs an arsenal of irritatingly irresistible, hook-filled pop-punk tunes that are turning these 21-year-olds into household names. On their second full-length record, Nothing Personal, the crab state natives make it clear they are not interested in being a short-lived trend.
Picking up where they left off, All Time Low rely on their gain-friendly guitar tones, groovy bass lines and smooth vocal melodies to craft a memorable, albeit generic record. This formula succeeds on singles “Weightless” and “Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don’t).” The aforementioned features one of the finest choruses in the group’s discography while the latter finds frontman Alex Gaskarth showing his lyrical wit with the line “I’m drowning in a river of denial,” further escalating the record’s already high fun factor.
Their octave-chord based, up-tempo and light-hearted tunes dominate the majority of the record. “Keep The Change, You Filthy Animal” and “A Party Song (The Walk of Shame)” find All Time Low maintaining their initially established momentum deep into the album. Both find success off of their immense choruses and persistent youthful energy.
With the success endured over the last year, many have labeled the group with traditional name-calls, ‘sell-out’ being the most common. Not wasting an opportune moment to exercise their humor, All Time Low named one of their headline tours “The Compromising of Integrity, Morality & Principles in Exchange for Money Tour,” a phrase taken verbatim from Wikipedia’s definition of sell-out. On Nothing Personal, Gaskarth and crew take a more serious route in dealing with their fiercest critics. “Sick Little Games” is a surprisingly mature, mid-tempo song that showcases the band confidently stepping out of their comfort zone. Utilizing an acoustic timbre in the rhythm section, the opening verse finds Gaskarth confessing, “I’m turned on by the tabloids, you would never have guessed/that I’m a sucker for their gossip, man I take it too far.” The tune certainly stands out on the record, marking a newfound sense of songwriting ability and collective maturity.
While there is much to praise throughout its 12 track duration, Nothing Personal does not finish without faults. Along with the fact that there are minimal amounts of originality and progression, production becomes an issue. The far too sugary studio fabrication brings sections of the record down. “Stella” recalls shenanigan filled nights after enjoying one too many Belgian ales (last name Artois) and its excessively glossy production is cavity inducing. “Too Much” finds the pop-punk quartet forgetting the second half of their genre. The embarrassingly awful song features an overuse of sampled drums and auto-tune heavy vocals, making it reminiscent of a half-hearted attempt at covering a 90s boy band.
Even despite their faults and lack of originality, All Time Low does enough right on their sophomore full-length effort to warrant multiple spins from any fan of the genre. Nothing Personal rarely takes itself too seriously and infrequently asks listeners to. Its youthful feel makes it a fantastic summer record that is also worthy of listens throughout the other three seasons. Nothing Personal makes a clear point as to why the foursome are soaking up the spotlight as of late. The truth to their success is rather simple: All Time Low is playing generic pop punk; they are just doing it better than everyone else at the moment.
Review By SputnikMusic
Artist: All Time Low
Album: Discography
Genre: Pop Punk / Pop / Punk
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/alltimelow
-Album List-
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Set Your Goals
Flash back to 6 years ago. Drive-Thru Records was all the rage, pop-punk wasn’t cliché yet, and New Found Glory ruled the scene. You loved NFG, Sum 41, and Blink 182, and there were no scene police to tell you otherwise. It was a time of music enjoyment without guilt. Now, the scene has changed. New Found Glory has moved on to the mainstream, hundreds of other bands have attempted to follow in their footsteps, and while some have succeeded, many have failed. An evolution of the music scene has occurred to the point in which it’s no longer acceptable to listen to hook-driven pop-punk songs without being ripped into by your peers on internet message boards. Part of that reason is because somewhere along the line, pop-punk lost its edge. Bands like New Found Glory rose from a thriving Florida hardcore scene (guitarist Chad Gilbert was in Shai Hulud pre-NFG) and their music contained a punch that packed more energy into their songs than their peers or eventual followers. Flash forward to 2006. A resurrection of what we once knew and loved has emerged, in the form of Set Your Goals.
Set Your Goals are a band who defies genres or musical boundaries. They are adored by pop-punk fans, hardcore buffs, and others alike. Their refreshing blend of hardcore energy and gang vocals mixed with familiar hooks creates a sound that can appeal to us all. While many of us have come a long way in 6 years in our musical evolution of personal tastes, there’s a huge portion of us that began in the same scene. While some of us still listen to pop-punk, others may have gone the hardcore/metal route, and others indie. But this debut full-length from Set Your Goals is just the right balance of an old sound many of us used to love. It’s enough to throw away the scene police whistles and come together once again for a ridiculously fun album.
Though Set Your Goals is far from a rip-off of their predecessors, the influence is evident. With an alternating vocal approach, the higher pitched side bears a mild resemblance to Jordan Pudnik (NFG). The other side of the vocals are more hardcore influenced, and Mutiny! features a mini-breakdown or two, as well as gang vocals and quickly paced, driving beats (see: Comeback Kid, 7 Seconds). Bursting full of instant summer anthems, Mutiny! does a good job balancing the two styles on refreshingly familiar (yet nostalgic) tracks like “Mutiny!” and “This Very Moment.” Other songs combine the styles a bit more awkwardly, as “To Be Continued…” has hardcore growls in it, with Tom DeLonge-esque vocals alongside in an unatural pairing that comes off as a bit much. Unfortunately, this song is almost 4 minutes long, and by the time it sinks into the 3rd minute, the song has lost significant amount of energy. Acoustic guitar parts in the middle of the song seem to kill the momentum it has gained. One of the main criticisms of this album is that it clocks in at less than 30 minutes with 4 songs that are around 4 minutes long. Having more songs at shorter lengths would keep the pace moving along smoother. Lasting value is also a concern for this record. While instantly fun and catchy, it doesn’t appear to have a significant amount of depth and it has a tendency to fade quicker than it should.
Despite its flaws, Mutiny! is a very solid debut from a band with a tremendous upside. The fact that the band struggles to find an identity is actually a good thing for them, because the clashing of hardcore/pop is outweighed by pop and makes the balance easier to stomach for most listeners. The problems with this album aren’t nearly big enough to change the fact that this is a fun summer album that reminds me of a sound that was completely lost in the scene about 4 years ago. Plus, the last song on the record, “Echoes,” ends with a resounding collection of harmonious da-da-da’s coming from every direction through your speakers that will bring a smile to anybody’s face. Pick up this record the day it comes out, no matter who you are or what your tastes are now – you might be pleasantly surprised.
Review By AbsolutePunk
Artist: Set Your Goals
Album: Discography
Genre: Punk / Rock / Pop Punk
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/setyourgoals
-Album List-
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Attack! Attack! UK
“Honesty didn’t get me anywhere… I know, because I read it in your diary…” goes the disingenuous opening vocal line of the eponymous début album from Cardiff’s Attack! Attack!. Well, maybe honesty didn’t get them anywhere in the fictional space of the song itself, but the album as a whole just goes to show what a difference some musical honesty can make.
You see, the thing that’s been annoying me more and more about the pop-rock explosion is the horrible glossy finish that gets slapped all over everything. It’s like some Pixar-produced CGI facsimile of itself, each iteration sounding further and further from what a band with instruments actually sound like. No such problems for Attack! Attack!, though – unless my review copy has been mastered wrong by accident, their first offering has a nice saturated tone to it that makes me slightly nostalgic for my days of listening to the Evening Session on a cheap FM radio.
Seriously, I’m not kidding – Attack! Attack! play amped-up guitars and bass that actually sound like amped-up guitars and bass; the drums are real drums, and not retriggered, quantized and pitch-perfect samples; and in the pacey sections the compressed cymbals splash and suck like the tide between the piles of an old pier. Attack! Attack! sound like… well, they sound like a proper rock band.
And it’s amazing how much of a difference that makes to my perception of their tunes, which aren’t particularly innovative or original (though perfectly competent for the style). Everything comes across with an unfeigned sense of passion and energy – Attack! Attack! sound like they wrote this stuff from the heart, and they play it like it’s their last chance to leave the planet before the asteroid hits. Listen to the riff from recent single “This Is A Test”, or the opening of “Say It To Me”: that’s how a pop-punk riff should be played. You can almost feel the soreness in your fingertips as they grate over the frets, the ache in your wrists and ankles as you batter the drumkit…
Attack! Attack! isn’t the perfect album, but compared to all the stuff I’ve heard from the same bracket in recent months, they’re streets ahead. Oh, sure, the songs are youth incarnate: “From Now On” sees the honesty meme raise its head again, and there’s plenty of ambiguous pop-punk relationship cheddar (“Lights Out”, for example). But that energy makes almost any sin forgiveable – if you’re old enough, Attack! Attack! will make you remember why you loved early Feeder, Cooper and Foo Fighters.
Attack! Attack! are a timely reminder that rock and pop can meet halfway without crashing into one another in a tangle of dismembered integrity and intentions. The whole album roars through fast with its foot to the floor, and all of a sudden you’re sat in the silence following the final note, and seriously thinking about putting it back on again. And why the hell not, eh?
Review By RockMetalMusic
Artist: Attack! Attack!
Album: Attack! Attack!
Genre: Alternative Rock / Powerpop / Pop Punk
MySpace: http://myspace.com/attackattackband
-Track List-
1. Honesty
2. You and Me
3. This Is a Test
4. Too Bad Son
5. From Now On
6. Say It to Me
7. Lights Out
8. Home Again
9. Lost for Words
10. Time Is Up
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With The Punches
With the Punches’ debut EP, Keep It Going, is a solid first showing in what should prove to be a very bright future for the group from New York. While the Pop/Punk genre seemed to be on the outs in recent times, With the Punches throws some stakes into the ground to make sure things aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
While the band cites the likes of New Found Glory and Blink-182 as influences (presumably the old Blink… who knows how they’ll sound reuniting after all these years), the group manages to take those sounds to create a new one that is entirely their own. True, you’ll hear some echoes of Sticks and Stones here and there, but there still remains the distinct feeling that you are listening to something new rather than derivative, and that new is good. More than that the music will remind fans of the genre what got them listening in the first place. The 7 song EP delivers what might be some of the best efforts we’ve heard in years from the genre with the songs Burned At Both Ends, Thrill Your Idols, and the title track Keep It Going, while Slizzard Crossing and Stick and Move pay homage to the traditions that made Pop/Punk… well, “Pop”
To be honest, the EP is surprisingly strong with all tracks delivering on a promise you would never expect a new band to make good on. The songs are catchy and infectious in a bob your head, sing–a–long in the car at the top of your lungs kind of way. Good luck trying to get through a listen without a single finger tap or smile.
At the end of the day this EP is, without a question, a great lead–in for the band and sure to win listeners over with repeated play in their iPods and car stereos. While the album suffers from a few production–stage mishaps and audio balancing quirks (really not the band’s fault and quite common for new artists — see Good Charlotte’s debut album), that nuance appears to be the EP’s only noticeable mis–step in what is otherwise a fine end product.
Quite simply, you should give the band a chance and listen to their tracks now readily available on iTunes on their MySpace page (which I hope they will soon leave in the dust like the rest of the world should). If you are already a fan, now is the time to place bets and get in on the ground floor while you still can…
Reviewed by jonny.gotham
Artist: With The Punches
Album: Keep It Going
Genre: Pop Punk / Rock
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/withthepunches
-Track List-
01 Don’t Catch A Brick 02:26
02 Thrill Your Idols 03:24
03 Corporate Ladder Match 03:03
04 Burned at Both Ends 03:34
05 Stick and Move 03:25
06 Slizzard Crossing (Your Doing it Wrong) 02:44
07 Keep it Going 03:00
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A Loss For Words
Some of the worst tornadoes come out of the blue. Literally. Calm, blue skies are overtaken by death-bringing whirlwinds with little to no warning. It’s these times when schoolchildren find out what happens when you fly over the swing set: sobering death. Farmers haplessly tilling their fields find no magical baseball fields. Instead they are catapulted to the Great Big Baseball Field in the Sky. These moments of misplaced ignorance, while excessively morbid, are perfectly parallel to the sort of mind games A Loss For Words create on their debut full-length The Kids Can’t Lose. Despite fast, summery tempos and wailing choruses, AL4W sneak in some of the most depressing lyrics this side of It Won’t Snow Where You’re Going. Apparently, Matty Arsenault has been wronged. Not enough to change any of his band’s musical tendencies, but just enough to beat us over the head with lines like, “How the tables turn / You’re the cause of this cancer.” Oof.
The Kids Can’t Lose would be enjoyable without its overly trite lyrics, right? Well hold on there, sport. (I’m good with nicknames!) Following the all too familiar path of pop(ular)-punk, AL4W don’t do a single, solitary, minuscule thing creative or different on this album. It’s even more derivative than my sad life. And that’s saying something! As the feedback clears on opener “Stamp Of Approval,” although “Stamp” may be interchanged at will with each of The Kids Can’t Lose’s 11 songs, we hear lyrics about everyone’s favorite state (California, duh!) and a bridge with some screaming that leads into a “Holy Crap that’s predictable!” climax. Let’s put it this way, in terms of redundancy, the song is two minutes longer than necessary. This moves into “40 Thieves,” named for the 40 riffs they stole from Set Your Goals. (Ed. Note: Oh snap! Can you say that? Shouldn’t I, the venerable editor, know the rules for this sort of thing?)
And then there are 9 more songs. Oh wait, there is black sheep “Mt. Saint Joseph,” an acoustic ballad used to, I guess, break up the album. Here we get a direct injection of Arsenault’s angst and I find myself longing for the energetic guitars of Marc Dangora and (awesomely named) Nevada Smith. As I said, they are a fairly interesting buffer between my ears and the broken heart mantras of Arsenault (see: “It was too damn hard to watch / As heaven and hell held you down like anchors / And your demons finally lulled you back to sleep.”) The slow, stagnant nature of this song just plain hurts.
Just so you understand my accreditation: I have a full, grisly beard. Wasn’t this genre created just for me? If I can’t even enjoy the gang vocals or inspirational(?) nature of these songs, who can? (Don’t answer that, a**holes.) Sorry, A Loss For Words, The Kids Can’t Lose is completely underwhelming.
Reviewed by Blake Solomon
Artist: A Loss For Words
Album: The Kids Can’t Loose
Genre: Pop Punk / Powerpop / Emo
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/alossforwords
-Track List-
1. Stamp Of Approval 3:06
2. 40 Thieves 3:20
3. Where I’m From, You Die With Your Secrets 3:08
4. Hold Your Breath 3:31
5. Mount St. Joseph 3:11
6. The Promises You Keep (Burn This Bridge) 2:45
7. Heavy Lies The Crown 3:13
8. Wasted Youth 3:06
9. Half Step Down 3:03
10. Behind Our Backs 3:01
11. Hot Hand In A Dice Game 3:05
Read MoreTry Album [Mediafire] | A Loss For Words – The Kids Can’t Loose