I was going to kick off my comeback review by doing The Fall of Math but it seems that that has been done enough and Ben has said a lot of what I was going to say and I wouldn't want to make you read the same thing twice. Therefore I have chosen to do Streetlight Manifesto as I missed them at Reading due to seeing A Place to Bury Strangers (who were fantastic and you should all check them out). I've come to see what all the hype is about.
As this album is actually still downloading I'll write about 65dos a bit. I agree completely with Ben in that the emotion in the songs is quite remarkable but I feel they pull this off much better in their later album The Destruction of Small Ideas. With the exception of Retreat! Retreat! I feel that every track on TDoSI is better than those on Fall of Math. They are executed and produced a lot more professionally and feel a lot deeper to me. One thing I would disagree with Ben and Matt on though is that I do not think that 65days need a vocalist, in fact I think its the last thing they need. What I love about this band is that I can put my own little thoughts as to what the song is about without being told by the lyrics, it makes me think more and my thoughts change everytime - in my opinion this band is perfect at what it does.
OK Streetlight Manifesto has finally finished downloading so we can now get down to business. Now the only 'ska' I've experienced is what the internet calls ska-punk and that makes me think of Less Than Jake, which makes me sad. Also there's Madness of course, I like Madness but they're a bit cheesy. I won't let these two bands cloud my judgement however. I'm actually very excited to be listening to this band.
The first thing that I have to say about this album is that its a lot of fun, bouncy and wholly original. I love the combination of horns and what we call your standard rock instruments, I'm really surprised by how well it works and all fits together. I feel that this is due to Streetlight just being fantastic musicians and I admire them for having the vision to make this kind of music. Another brilliant factor is that this sounds like a genuine genre rather than just a gimmick, which was my major problem with Skindred.
I've found the album to be very consistent, perhaps a bit too consistent as many of the songs sound incredibly similar. Despite this I can't say that its boring at all, which confuses me as I've always considered songs sounding the same a massive let down and gotten quickly bored and I'm sure most of you will agree with me. But SM managed to keep me interested throughout and I find them just a very enjoyable band.
One small thing that I'm not a fan of is the lead vocalist. While I don't mind him I think they could do with one who's somewhat less gravely. His voice seemed to grate on me after a while but luckily I still have the music to enjoy. While I didn't find the lyrics bad or below average I still didn't find them to be the most attention grabbing but I still found that they go well with the music.
Overall this is a very good album that deserved the hype my fellow authors gave it after Reading and now. I was really impressed by the band's originality and musicianship and while I wasn't a big fan of the vocalist the positive aspects outweigh the negative. 4/5
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