Review Summary: The Hall's exit is on your right...
What was it about
Breakeven,
The First Time, or
The Man Who Can't Be Moved that made them such outstanding songs? What was it about The Script’s earlier work that made them more than a guilty pleasure but a genuinely interesting group? These were two questions that played off in my mind back and forth relentlessly as I forced myself to trudge through
No Sound Without Silence’s tracks this week. As every song reverberated through my mind with empty beats and forgettable melodies I was more focused on finding an answer to my questions than actually listening to what it was I was meaning to review. Had any of these questions even mattered? Were they even worth pondering for a group that had two good albums at best? It was at some point through my endless seas of drafts and listening to Superheroes for the umpteenth time in a row that I had realized everything that I was asking had such simple answers.
You see, the problem with
No Sound Without Silence isn’t just it’s bland production, backwards presentations and constant, forgettable writing and music. Which are all fatal annoyances mind you, but the biggest problem with
No Sound Without Silence is how openly comfortable The Script are with their clear cut mediocrity. They’re not only missing the point of what made their self titled and in certain aspects Science/Faith good albums. They’re also under some misguided delusion that their new style is actually appealing to those who haven’t heard them as a group before. That these water downed mindless blends of simplistic guitar strings droning in and out of their respectively dull synth leads are actually appealing to new fans. But I digress, simply put there is nothing good about
No Sound Without Silence. In the long run even
#3 had some worth to it. While it suffered the same drawbacks of
No Sound, there were at least moments where the group looked like they cared. Though here, there doesn’t seem to be a single genuine moment of sincerity or charm as every track passes one ear and out the other like some kind of sick, perverted elevator music.
The occurring issues of
No Sound Without Silence start in the instant that the first guitar kicks in. Once again The Script have toned down their groovy bubble pop rock sound for a slower, more alternative sound that doesn’t suit the group’s up-beat and charismatic frontman in anyway. With the new wave of uninspired rock and pop blends comes even worse lyrics. Taking inspirations out of a “How-to write” handbook come some of the worst cookie cutter lyrics that the band has put out to date yet. So bad that it’s insulting to their previous talents. Rather it be the by the numbers heartbreak anthem of “you broke up with me but I’m A-OK” in
No Good In Goodbye or
Without Those Songs. Or to the downright insulting lyrics from tracks like
Never Seen Anything Quite Like You. Seriously, how did you go from
Breakeven to this:
Well I've seen you in jeans with no make-up on
And I've stood there in awe as your date for the prom
I'm blessed as a man to have seen you in white
But I've never seen anything quite like you tonight
The album doesn’t sound any better either. All the guitars, pianos, and synths bleed into each other to create incredibly vapid progressions throughout the album’s entire running time. Tracks like
Hail, Rain, or Sunshine and
Paint The Town Green try their hardest to jam oddly out of place scottish-esque chanting and skip beat guitars into the mix, but without any power on the vocal side they only end up being forced. Meanwhile the rest of the tracks continue with the same guitar intro, synth verse, piano break, guitar/synth crescendo and then a slow fade out structure. It get’s to the point where the lines blur between each track and you just end up hearing Hall of Fame thirteen times. Just with less Will.I.Am. And considering how terrible The Script’s fourth effort turned out to be, maybe Will.I.Am would’ve been an improvement to the album. If you for some odd reason were considering to pick up a copy of this album just let that closing thought sink in for a minute.
