If there’s a genre of music that splits the Punktastic reviewing staff it’s the dreaded ‘e’ phenomenon. While some of us take it for what it is and quite like it, other members of the reviewing team cannot stand it. One of the bands at the forefront of the emo generation has been Taking Back Sunday – part of the Long Island explosion which pretty much kicked off this whole post-hardcore gubbins in 2001/2. While ‘Tell All Your Friends’ is widely recognised as one of the leading records in the genre, other bands have gone on to wrestle Taking Back Sunday‘s crown. Even their former buddies in Brand New – or are they friends now, I keep losing count – have managed to sky rocket ahead of them in the post-hardcore premier league. Having half your band walk out didn’t help matters, while allegedly having a walking ego as a singer (I blame the media, I know you lot all do) probably won’t help your cause either. But for whatever reason TBS lost some momentum and got lost in the dust that their fellow Long Islanders had kicked up. That was, of course, until this little record found its way out of the studio. ‘Tell All Your Friends’ part two it most certainly ain’t, but it’s likely to have a similar impact its big brother had many moons ago.
This certainly won’t re-write the rulebook like TBS did when they kicked off this silly genre explosion and it certainly isn’t the progression that Brand New showcased with the mouth-wateringly amazing ‘Deja Entendu’. But ‘Where You Want To Be’ is still a little cracker. It’s not as instant as its predecessor and certainly does not have the same huge choruses (there’s no ‘There’s No I In Team’ part two, if you catch my drift), but there’s a maturity and cleverness that pulls the listener in. Not only does it hook you in but it drip-feeds goodness to you over time. You certainly won’t ‘get’ this record first time round, let’s put it that way. When they talk about albums growing on you, they don’t suggest you start looking at trees, they hand you a copy of this record. Obviously there are similarities – Adam Lazzara still sounds the same and the guitars are as crashing as they ever have been – but despite John Nolan‘s departure the backing vocals, provided by Fred Mascherino, are probably better than they ever have been.
If the opening double-salvo of ‘Set Phasers To Stun’ and ‘Bonus Mosh pt II’ lead you to believe everything I’ve written above is a pile of tosh you’d be quite correct, for these two tracks are probably the only two that could sit on their debut album and not sound out of place. “John who?†I hear the fans cry, and they’d be right. But it’s from track three onwards that you can start to notice the older, and maybe wiser, Adam Lazzara. ‘A Decade Under The Influence’ was a real disappointment to me first time round. I was left thinking where the bite was, where the vocal hooks would be and why, oh why, they’d toned it all down. But after a while you’ll come to realise that this isn’t the case at all. And while it may be a strange choice of single, it’s still TBS, albeit a more musically mature one. Ditto ‘This Photograph Is Proof (I Know You Know)’, even if it has a crap title.
And so on we go, marching forward with the driving ‘The Union’ and the clever ‘I Am Fred Asatrire’, which even has a slight The Get Up Kids feel to it, especially in the first 30 seconds. You’d never have thought that was going to happen after the first album, eh? The tricks continue to flow from their sleeves with the crunching ‘One Eighty By Summer’, which shows you don’t have to rely on screaming to be emotionally heavy. My favourite track has to be ‘Number Five With A Bullet’ though. Maybe it’s the production, maybe it’s this new found maturity – but this fucking rocks. Perhaps the only song that lets the side down is the appalling ‘New American Classic’, which takes Dashboard Confessional and ruins it. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, how can you ruin something that’s already ruined? Exactly my friends; you cannot polish a turd Adam, what were you thinking?
So TBS are back with a bang. ‘Where You Want To Be’ shows that their first record was not a flash in the pan. Don’t expect miracles on the first listen, but stick with this and you’ll come to love it. Whether it will spawn the many crappy spin-offs that TBS did first time round is a different question, but in a genre spiralling out of quality control, this record does enough to satisfy with post-hardcore craving. Now, where’s my scarf and backpack?
www.takingbacksunday.com
Victory Records
Paul