Dorks And Losers

On its third album, Long­wave tries to keep the old sound from its sec­ond album, The Strangest Things, while also exper­i­ment­ing with new stuff. As an alter­na­tive band, Long­wave strives to rock, and while it suc­ceeds in some moments, there are also a few missteps.

The open­ing track “There’s A Fire” starts the album with a bang. While main­tain­ing an alter­na­tive vibe, the song does hint at some new wave influ­ence. Through­out the album, there is much vari­ety in the track lay­out. You can go from the retro “River (Depot Song)” to the anthem-like “The Flood” with­out skip­ping a beat — although it does get repet­i­tive. Switch­ing back and forth between tem­pos doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily cause any loss of qual­ity, but more of a loss in focus.

Long­wave tries to spice up its sound with a lit­tle bit of pop, punk and rock. “Tell Me I’m Wrong” is the album’s only real pop song and jux­ta­posed to “Heart Attack” cre­ates echoes of the song “Tidal Wave” from The Strangest Things. The con­fu­sion begins with “Fall On Every Whim” in that you begin to notice the odd place­ment of some songs. Does the band strive for alter­na­tive rock (“There’s A Fire”), pop rock (“Tell Me I’m Wrong”) or mel­low rock (“Next Plateau”)?

“We’re Not Gonna Crack” is the band’s attempt at punk, but turns into a failed pop punk song in the realm of Amer­i­can Hi-Fi or Goldfin­ger rather than punk in the realm of The Lib­ertines or The Sex Pis­tols. There are more float­ing influ­ences from Pink Floyd [“River (Depot Song)”] and old 50s pop songs (“Next Plateau”). All in all, There’s A Fire is a good unfo­cused album. But hey, not every band can be Pink Floyd or U2.

[photo via Chrome Waves]
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Track list:

1. There’s A Fire
2. Under­world Song
3. River (Depot Song)
4. The Flood
5. Tell Me I’m Wrong
6. Heart Attack
7. Danc­ing In The Light
8. We’re Not Gonna Grack
9. Down In Here
10. Fall on Every Whim
11. Next Plateau
12. Under­neath You Know The Names

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