In Sickness & In Flames, the Front Bottoms, August 21 2020, :52
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Folk-punk, or rather folk-emo band. Sounds like nothing so much as an acoustic Say Anything. And a little like Defiance, Ohio. I like the angry strumming and shouted choruses and the earnest heart-on-their-sleeve vocals. The lyrics are rather trite but they fit the material, somehow. Not profound, but strongly felt, let's say; not everything needs to be poetic. If I have a cavil about this album it's that it seems overloaded. At a generous 52 minutes over 12 songs, many of them 4 or 5 minutes, and every song an epic, with several ending with these ten- or fifteen-second long muttered spoken word codas… and it just gets to be a bit much. As I say, though, that's a minor grouse. Favorite tracks: "Fairbanks, Alaska," "Love At First Sight," "Camouflage."
