It’s beautiful, it’s melodic and an easy listen, but if Moneen fans are looking for more of the band’s usual sound on the band’s new album, they won’t find it here.
“The World I Want To Leave Behind,” released today on Vagrant Records, is the fourth full-length album from Moneen. The title track and first song on the album starts the emotional roller coaster of this pop-rock experience with a good buildup, but vocals are a bit drowned out by the instrumental ups and downs.
“Hold That Sound,” the second track on the album, which also has a music video, is more like old Moneen, with a rough and dirty sound fans will remember from 2003’s “Are We Really Happy With Who We Are Right Now?”
It seems like vocalist Kenny Bridges was having some life realizations or maybe a quarter-life crisis when recording the album. More melodic than the 2006 album, “The Red Tree,” the tracks are chock full of pretty interludes and slightly poetic verse. But the lyrics are interesting in that they have an underlying theme of realizing who you are and where you’re going. On “Believe,” for instance, Bridges declares “you’ve got to believe you’ll find your own way/you gotta be strong/you’ve got to believe in your own way.” It leaves the listener wondering when Moneen turned into a group of motivational speakers instead of angsty screamos.
On the track “Great Escape,” listeners will enjoy the old-school Taking Back Sunday-esque sound, but the song is still poppier than usual. The track gets a little redundant toward the end regardless of its musical ups and downs.
For those whose musical tastes that have calmed down substantially since beginning college or simply grew out of the screaming, this is the album. Its sounds are beautiful and almost a bit haunting, with sounds very comparable to Copeland’s “Beneath Medicine Tree,” or Jimmy Eat World’s “Clarity.” It’s not typical Moneen, but it’s OK to let go of that to enjoy this album.
Surprisingly, it was the tracks that sounded like old Moneen that didn’t really hold my interest.
“The Monument,” for instance, was familiar sounding, but the background screaming didn’t seem to mesh well with the rest of the album.
Moneen even ventured to have a power ballad, “Waterfalls,” which got a little too whiny and slow at times, with lines like “you don’t love me/you don’t care/you don’t love me anymore.”
The album is a definite must-listen for those who want a pop-rock sound that is punky enough without being obnoxious, but calm enough to have it on in the background while doing homework.
For those who want more Moneen in their lives, they can catch them performing Oct. 2 at Mac’s Bar, 2700 E. Michigan Ave., Lansing.
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