Review Summary: Is the band name a sex thing?
When We Team Up's band name reflects their music perfectly: an unimpressive pop-punk band. You can gather everything that comes in this EP solely by their band name and album title. You won't find anything that will urge you to listen to this for months to come, as it'll get muffled by all the other pop-punk that's out there. Ultimately, it's a poor aggregation of all their influences (The Wonder Years, A Loss For Words, Blink-182, A Day to Remember, etc.) and that in itself doesn't sound too appealing -- many other bands fuse the elements of those bands better than this one. However, if you're a sucker for pop-punk (such as me), you may find this enjoyable for a bit.
Most likely, the first thing you'll notice is the voice that takes awhile to get used to; when, and if, you get used to his voice, you'll find an undeniable resemblance in vocal effort from vocalist Sean Smith in comparison to Set Your Goal's vocalist Matt Wilson. For some of you, that may be nice, but for others it's understandable for the disliking. Throughout this EP, you'll find a few surprising stand-outs; for example, the bassist, Brenden McBraye, stands out a lot in this short listen. In "No, Dude, it IS Cool" you'll find a pretty killer and dominant bass-line. You'll find his bass playing more in this listen than anything, hopefully, because it's easily their best aspect.
Songs on this EP don't vary too noticeably in structure; most of the verses found are incredibly underwhelming, which are compensated modestly with their decently catchy choruses. "5,000 Candles in the Wind", the opener, starts off with as much atmosphere as a pop-punk song can manage, and it feels like the song would build up into something more. Disappointingly, it just leads into a generic "easycore" breakdown, which leads to an abrupt ending. Combining hardcore elements with pop-punk never really seem to be a good idea, but bands continue to do it anyway -- and that's another thing that keeps this band from being different from their peers. Maybe they should get rid of the heavy sections? No band ever adheres to that advice, though.
I feel that When We Team Up has some amount of potential, but they would have to work hard to get anywhere within the huge, generic style of pop-punk/hardcore they decide to play. I should add a little pun about how they should team up and gather different influences, but that would be far too expected.
