Don't You Fake It

Boom. My blog's not locked up and suffering from low readership liao. Hopefully I won't be too conscious of my (much) wider audience and con't to write like I do. But there'll surely be a slight variation. Coz, like, anyone can read this now. Teachers, strip-club dancers, members of grungy garage rock bands, old, balding, myopic politicians and even your mom.

Anyway, point of this post is to review Don't You Fake It by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus.

My first impression of RJA was that they were a pretty nondescript pop rock band, something along the lines of the All-American Rejects. It's amazing how wrong I can be. In actual fact, they're more of a extremely addictive and respectable cross between FOB and the hardcore punk part AFI, leaning a bit more to the AFI side.

Cat and Mouse is a refreshing sparse and emotional song, a good laspe from the mood of the rest of the album. (Am I supposed to be happy? When all I ever wanted, it comes with a price. You said, you said that you would die for me. Fantastic. So freaking much disappointment and self-doubt there.)

The first single, Face Down, is, natuarally, the song that make the deepest first impression. But I listened to it a bit more and thought that the songs that really rocked were Atrophy, In Fate's Hands, False Pretense and Damn Regret.

The really best of Atrophy is the last chorus, when the chorus overlaps with the verse. Hearing on my computer, it didn't sound amazing or anything. But when I heard it using headphone, it totally melted me. OMFG great.

In Fate's Hands and False Pretense are actually quite alike. Upbeat with heavy, incessant bass and versatile and nimble guitar, the two lines entangle and meld into the vocals seamlessly, despite not actually shining on their own. There isn't any exceptionally fantastic drumming, though.

Damn Regret, from its title, should have been a heavy, angsty song, something like the Sharpest Lives by MCR. But it's actually something pretty pop rock, but a bit more intelligent and sophisticated than, say, S.O.S by the world's most *bleeped*-up people (the Jonas Bros, dumb). The first verse is pretty brilliant, coming right after a red-blooded American distroted guitar intro. "The moon is shining bright. The mood is feeling bright. I'll kiss you on your neck. People'll stare but we won't care," he sings with romantic, quiet delicacy. Despite this, the song totally has no trace of the corniness of a standard-issue love song.

I said that they were like FOB and AFI. The FOB comes from the crunchy and chunky guitar and bass (though FOB's is still better) while the AFI comes from the way he screams, suddenly switching from his decent but not really outstanding voice. The screams are amzaing, almost identical the Davey Havok's, (AFI's frontman) primal and raging and drawled over the bass, focusing the entire song on that sole sound.

Woo. Long post. Tired liao. Don't think will be posting much during the EOYs.

"Some days he feels like dying,

She gets so sick of crying."

~Extraordinary Girl by Green Day