The Junior Varsity "Wide Eyed" CD
[Victory]
As I was popping this disc in I got nervous noticing that they have a full-time synth player, as I really don't care for keyboards and tend to fear the worst in terms of overzealous hipster nonsense whenever I see them mentioned in such a context, but despite a few minor hitches I'm pleased to note that, perhaps unfortunately for the synth player, the band doesn't seem to make the keyboards very prominent at all in most cases. Thus their brand of fairly typical emo/indie rock is as catchy and to the point as I'd prefer, and I can generally enjoy their approach. Instead, what usually starts to get to me is the overuse of spacey guitar effects and pull-off riffs (often in cooperation with one another), but again, for the most part I can appreciate this. Expect fairly straightforward songwriting averaging three to four minutes with a mix of spiraling clean guitars and distorted melodic chord progressions with standard singing that spans a decent midrange scope with ample vocal harmonies. Perhaps the only downfall in the writing department is that there's really not much variety at all in terms of tempo, dynamics, or general riffing style, so indeed most of the songs do sound pretty damn similar to one another, which can start to be a bit tedious midway through the disc. "Mad for Medusa" is a little more immediate in terms of catchiness, even if the keyboards are more prominent and trendy sounding (Hey, sometimes it works!); "Do You Mind?" is perhaps a touch slower and more distinct rhythmically, also contrasting between clean or lightly distorted guitars with ringing effects and pulsing basslines; and "I Said Try" tosses in a couple of jarring riffs and some nice percussive patterns that lend an off kilter edge to the flow, but despite a few strengths (which all of the songs do possess) the pull-off riffing and swirling chorus effects or whatever still tend to dominate in the end. The same might be said for all of the dense reverberations in "If It Hurts You", which does stand apart simply because it's among the only tracks that takes a quieter and more subdued road throughout, but the more energetic and active side of their songwriting is honestly more memorable anyway. The production is pretty damn good, as expected. The mix is nice and thick, and I definitely dig the force of the rhythm section. It wouldn't hurt to bring the bass up a little more, but the percussions sounds absolutely excellent. The guitars and vocals are actually fairly well done, too. The vocals are nice and dry in texture but rest barely in front in the mix to give them a little more brightness, and the guitars are barely heavy with density but still follow the vocals in driving the material with a fairly dry, crisp texture. Visually there are a couple of really cool photographs, but I'm not particularly feeling the color scheme or the spaced out elements of the images/textures, though I guess that stuff does kind of correlate to the spacey guitar effects that I mentioned earlier (granted I don't care for those either, of course). The text is really clean and compact though, and I'm all for that. The lyrics are admittedly a hint more clouded and abstract than most such bands, which isn't so bad, though they definitely make very little sense at times: "I'm mad for Medusa but hung up on how it feels to be a ceramic and now you know Amelia I may never meet you maybe the ocean's where you rest Bermuda I may never see you just because no one's coming back..." For the most part this disc is damn near a 7/10 in terms of overall quality, and I was tempted to go there with it, but... the more I listen to this material the more I realize that the songs are simply too similar to one another to hold my interest for 40 minutes. While not terribly inventive the band does have something to offer from a songwriting standpoint, but they definitely need to push a little harder for more differentiation from song to song. I like most of this stuff and feel that they're definitely on the right track, but they're not quite there yet. I'm sure they'll completely win me over in the future, though! (6/10)
Running time - 41:05, Tracks: 11
[Notable tracks: Mad for Medusa, Do You Mind?, What it Meant to Be Clean]
Victory Records - http://www.victoryrecords.com

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