Emotionalpunk.com
Media Review
Tracklisting
2. We All Roll Along
3. Girls Do What They Want
4. I Must Be Dreaming
5. Into Your Arms
6. Time To Go
7. This Is The End
8. Whoever She Is
9. Count 'em One, Two, Three
10. Kiss And Sell
11. You Left Me
12. We'll All Be...
From hot Arizona come The Maine, an energetic quintet with a rejuvenating take on rooted emo pop punk. “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” is, quite simply, a happy record. It’s filled with poppy, catchy hooks and is tingling with strong familiarity, but I can’t get enough of it.
A few things are for sure: it seems like singer O’Callaghan sounds like he is deliberately trying to duplicate the styles of Keith (Days Away) and Kenny (The Starting Line). And sure, the songs blatantly draw from said artists (see “Time To Go,” which immediately sounds almost identical to The Starting Line’s “Island,” or “Count ‘Em One, Two Three” which recalls TSL’s “Autobiography”). And the way O’Callaghan rolls the lyrics off his tongue almost always sounds like Keith was reincarnated in this band. The guitar style is distinctly familiar, too: a clever guitar hook behind driving chord progressions and stop/start energy pulses.
It would be easy for me to proceed by attacking the band for undeniably drawing musical style and song structure from these bands—or to say they are simply copying a style that’s been done before. But for some reason, The Maine’s LP, while at once completely unoriginal and reminiscent, sounds classic and refreshing. Maybe it’s the simply put chorus on the opener when O’Callaghan shouts “She makes me feel like shit, but I can’t get over it” or the aggressive backing vocals on “I Must Be Dreaming,” but The Maine really hit a sweet spot that hasn’t been hit in a long time. Maybe I’m the only one who will feel this way, but every time I put on this record I immediately go back to the very first time I heard “The Feel Of It” by Days Away. And that’s something I simply can’t and won’t stop feeling anytime soon.