Review Summary: The likely peaking of Angels and Airwaves' chemistry and relevance as a band.
In 2011, Angels & Airwaves released what would quickly become my favorite album from their catalog. Forgive me for taking so long to review, but there's several thoughts I really want to put out there.
Love Pt. 2 is not the most enjoyable album as the sum of its individual tracks, but it is the most artistically sound. There are essentially three segments of Love Pt. 2 that I consider to be movements. The first three tracks are the radio songs. I tend to skip the first two, but there is something about "Anxiety" that appeals to me, albeit on a simple level. These songs are more hooky, simplistic and surface-level than the rest of the album.
In our second movement, we get more progressive. The songs become more unique and variable in sound. "Dry Your Eyes" almost feels Eastern at first, and "Moon as My Witness" features a laid-back tempo and heartfelt delivery one would normally find in acoustic music. This track is a standout because it features Tom's newfound discovery that at 35 years old he has the ability to sing in a light, pleasant voice.
The third movement is tracks 7 through 9, which put simply are the best tracks in AVA's album if not the catalog. The trio act as a stadium rock punch that exemplify what Angels & Airwaves truly set out to do with the "space rock" genre. These three work well in successive order and I never found myself skipping them. The same cannot be said about the last two tracks, which I found disappointing.
Love Pt. 2 is the current pinnacle of Angels & Airwaves' career because of focused album construction and the musical chemistry they have formed as a band. I truly believe that the album has three hearts, three subsets of songs that fit together to make a satisfying, properly complex whole. Some may disagree, but I find tracks 1-3, 4-6 and 7-9 to be cousins. Atom Willard was the heartbeat of this band. Every album I've heard, I find myself imitating his work, and this is most true with Love Pt. 2. Willard's instrumentation remains the heartbeat of the music, his fills and infectious, and he is always tasteful but active. The drums are easily the instrumental highlight of the entire album. I have optimism for Ilan Rubin's role in the band, but in order for them to find the same role of artistic success, he will need to be as much a foundation and link between the other instruments as Atom was. We will see where we go from here; I credit the drums as the star player in this album.
There are also some profound negatives I wish to put forth. "Dry Your Eyes" is not a great song. Also, it directly rips off "Everything is Magic", if unintentionally. "Get off your feet don't pretend to cry"... "Everything, everything is magic". Line up a couple phrases from the two songs like that. It's somewhat off-putting. And I didn't enjoy the intro or the song.
"All That We Are", in the first half of the track, has the potential to be my favorite song. I enjoy Tom's vocals that softly set the stage for our explosive ending. The instrumental buildup is a great pump-up for the final guitar solo, a place they ended with us in Love Pt. 1. And then... The guitar solo sucks. It's a goddamn masturbatory session, and it's not a very glorious one either. I was upset by this solo; the buildup was great and then I lost all my wind at the end. These two songs knocked the album down a peg for me.
I'm very happy with where the band off in 2011. Hopefully the band can find ways to insert several types of songwriting as they did here, to make a cohesive whole, and use Ilan Rubin properly as their foundation. If they do so, in my eyes, they are certain to find success.
