Hall has a good voice for this, mostly singing with a slightly affected twang that he can elevate to a scream or a wail as needed (used to great effect, for example, on “Cadmium”). What establishes and sells the album’s alt-emo bona fides is the lyrics and singer Evan Hall’s vocals. “Then Again,” the album’s most straightforward rock song, is the only thing here that sounds like it came from someone who might have listened to Saves the Day. “New Friends” too, with its upbeat strum, could be a Jason Isbell song in another life. “Old Friends,” with its slide guitar and banjo accompaniment, is the kind of rock song that Band of Horses has been trying to make for the past five records – it sounds dusty, lived in, worn but loved. Remove the vocals and Cardinal sounds like a Nashville product, not the work of a group of people from northern New Jersey. Musically, it falls in line with the American emo style of recent groups like Hop Along and Laura Stevenson, pushing the style further into the realm of country music.
If you widen the punk umbrella enough, it’s tempting to call Pinegrove’s excellent new album, Cardinal, the shape of emo to come. Even if one were to ignore the myriad punk luminaries that started out howling before turning into the man who was too loud, the fact remains that both genres traditionally tell stories of the working-class, the oppressed, the rebellious and the tragic. It would be hard to deny the connection between punk and folk music.
0 kommentar(er)
