Cai's rating: 3/7
Every time I play my high school self's favorite band in the car, my friend Cai immediately shouts and skips the song. He hates Brian Sella's supposedly whiney and white vocals and the overall emo and edgy-ness of the group. So, in order to torture him, I made him listen and review their new album, which came out October 13th, Going Grey.
Here is how he ranked the songs:
actually okay: "You Used to Say (Holy Fuck)", "Peace Sign", "Trampoline, Raining"
mediocre/no feelings: "Vacation Town", "Don't Fill Up on Chips", "Grande Finale"
absolutely awful: "Bae", "Far Drive", "Everyone But You"
Overall, he liked a little less than half of the songs. His main complaint is the overall sound of Sella's vocals. Cai thinks that Stella writes pretty good lyrics, but they are overshadowed by the whine in his voice. He said some good things I agreed with. This album is MUCH more produced than TFB's previous albums, which consist mainly of acoustic guitars, bass, the rare electric, and heavy drums. Sometimes, the produced style didn't go well with the rawness of Sella's vocals. In some instances, there was even so much synth that the new album sounded more like Walk The Moon or Bleachers than the midwest emo band we have come to know and (in my case) love.
In my opinion, the band didn't do a drastic enough switch into production land to appeal to a new crowd, but didn't stay true to their classic sound to appeal to their fans, resulting in appealing to no one. I was pretty disappointed by the album.
