Emotionalpunk.com
Media Review
Music Quality: 9.0
Production: 9.0
Originality: 7.0
Tracklisting
2. Alexandria As Our Lens
3. Tear A Gash
4. I Don't Wear A Coat
5. The Dense Indents
6. She's The Type Of Girl
7. I Am The Doctor
8. Too Late, Too Soon
9. U And Left Turns
10. Lunch For The Sky
11. We Burn Houses
12. Spots I've Been And Go
13. B To E
14. Spending Galore
With very few exceptions, Drive Thru Records has been able to maintain most of its integrity when it comes to new music. A few years back when bands like New Found Glory, Finch and Something Corporate blew up, and those bands jumped ship for bigger and better things, the label was left to fill these voids. A few bands have put out great records (Hidden in Plain View, Hellogoodbye), but in this new class of bands, Socratic seems to be destined to move to the forefront with their latest effort “Lunch for the Sky.”
The record begins with a musical interlude and goes straight into “Alexandria as Our Lens.” This is a very typical Socratic song with lush guitar arrangements, a solid rhythm section and a very melodic piano and vocal combination. The end of the track even takes a cut at the current emo/screamo trend. “Hey all you screamo, what’s the deal?/When any talent that you lack/Is covered up by the fact/That you can scream really loud.” It is the song writing and the band’s great sense of melody that holds this album together and even sets it apart from almost everything out there today. Meanwhile the band still is able to maintain its pop sensibility. Songs like “I Don’t Wear a Coat” “Lunch for the Sky” and “Tear a Gash” seem prime and ready for radio airplay.
Probably the shocker on the album is a slow almost-ballad, “U and Left Turns.” It seems as though the entire band is singing together on this track accompanied by atmospheric guitars. The voices are raw, out of tune and rarely together but for some reason it works out very well.
For an album I enjoyed so much, it was far too long. Fourteen songs is a steep order. I might even suggest they take “We Burn Houses” put it in the middle of the CD and make “Lunch for the Sky” the last track. It just seemed like a lot of the songs were unneeded. Not necessarily filler, but made the CD much longer than it should have been.
Overall, this was a solid debut. There are about five songs I know I will never get sick of hearing, but the rest was just kind of meh. If you enjoy Say Anything, Something Corporate, Ben Folds or even Harvey Danger, you need to check these guys out.