A slew of fantastic albums have been arriving so far this year (almost standing up to 2012’s impressive opening quarter), and a late contender for the 2013 Q1 crown is RVIVR’s ‘The Beauty Between’.
Up until now, RVIVR have been releasing pretty great releases with particularly great tracks on them, but here we’re talking all killer, no almost killer. The 14 tracks on display here fly by in no time, and though you’ll need to be into the slightly scrappier, indie twinged end of punk to “get” it, there’s little doubt that ‘The Beauty Between’ is a fantastic record.
Tracks like ‘Ocean Song’, the trio of tracks that form ‘The Hunger Suite’ and ‘Old Dogs’ are simply excellent, and with any justice this will be the record that lets the band take a big step up. Erica Freas manages to blend the riot grrl growl with the melodic female vocals of bands from the UK like Los Campesinos!, and though you’d have to be an idiot not to love the crap out of gender crossover vocals in punk in general, RVIVR make fantastic use of the different timbres to create an aggressive, yet upbeat sound.
Notably and thankfully, it seems the “girl in a punk band” stigma seems to be lifting across the board recently, and hopefully most will be able to appreciate how well the vocals bounce off each other without resorting to commenting on whether “they would” or not.
That aside, some people really aren’t going to sit through 14 tracks of anything (get help, guys), but if there’s a punk record everyone should give a chance this year, you could do far worse than ‘The Beauty Between. RVIVR’s music drips with sweat, honesty and good times, and you’d have to be a little bit insane not to enjoy it. It’s easily the best thing they’ve ever done, and here’s hoping it gets them into thousands of new ears.
If you’re not sure on whether to invest or not, then the whole thing is streaming anyway so you’ve little excuse not to at least give it a go.
TOM AYLOTT