Review Summary: Taking Back Sunday's debut is one of my favorite records ever!
The greatest thing about loving a band for an extended peiord of time is being able to see all the band’s ideologies warp and form new ones as they try new things. One of the best offenders of this is Taking Back Sunday, with their early releases quite different to their new, pop punk albums. This album is straight-out pop-punk, nothing more, yet nothing less, but they amount in a fun rollercoaster ride. There is the well known fight that spewed from this album between the guy from Brand New and the one from here. Well the song ‘There’s no time in I’ is basically a comeback to Brand New’s song ‘70x7!’ This is probably one of my favorite songs on the album, and it is far superior to anything lacey managed to produce on your favourite weapon.
The playing is pretty simple by TBS, they don’t do too much but I suppose that is the whole point. It’s really quite catchy and fun though, and some of the melodies are quite complicated too! The vocalist is the 8th wonder of the world, singing his heart out with emotion, and love. Evidence of this is obvious from nearly the world go, as the song ‘Cute without the ‘E’, displays him shouting his little guts out about being betrayed by friends and this theme occurs many times within the record. He belts out lines with such a furiosity it is kind of hard to view this as just pop punk, as it is something more, something deeper than that.
From here on end the album becomes a more appeasing listen, with the track ‘Theres no I in team!’ This is a great track, and the title of it seems to symbolize it to be a typical, lyrically sub-standerd song, yet it is actually amazing. The harmony to go along with the vocal melody is simply brilliant, it eclipses the one the guitar is playing, so props to the vocalist for that one! The next track ‘Great Romances of the 20th century,’ is similarly a fun, nice track yet it has a slight hardcore edge. But the band mixes things up on ‘Timberwolves at New Jersey,’ which was almost a power ballad until the end where it gets heavier, heavier and even more heavier before it explodes in a burst of furious fire! Although this album is really simple it is really awesome to. The vocals rule, some guitar melodies are quite enlightening, and overall it has some of the best pop-punk songs to ever be performed on a pop-punk record.
