Alexisonfire – iTunes Originals

From my perspective, the whole iTunes Originals series is ultimately another way for bands and labels to repackage existing songs into somewhat of an unofficial greatest hits compilation.  Generally if you’re a fan you’ll already have most of the recordings, save for the live or acoustic performances recorded at iTunes HQ.  The biggest draw for fans though, is the meaty commentary dispersed between tracks.  Still, in today’s Wikipedia led information age, fans will likely be able to access most of these insights and anecdotes online soon after, so they’re really only must haves for fans who demand to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

And so with all this baggage we turn to Alexisonfire’s iTunes Originals collection.  Alexisonfire has been around for a while now, and their post-hardcore/screamo antics have come a along way over the past decade.  As the band discusses throughout their commentary, the five-piece started as that quintessential early 00’s screamo band, and have since been involved in so many divergent solo projects (i.e. City And Colour, Black Lungs) that, at present, they’re barely a reflection of their former selves.  As they point out during the chatter, “the whole dynamic of singing and screaming had been reaching a point of cliché,” and as abundantly clear in the previous two albums, Crisis and Old Crows/Young Cardinals, Alexisonfire has only survived because of its bandmates’ committed to their own evolution.

And it’s this commitment that arguably makes some portions of Alexisonfire’s iTunes Originals worthwhile.  The band mostly takes submissions from their current releases – the first five songs only include tracks from Crisis and Old Crows/Young Cardinals – but those they revisit from their first couple albums (Watch Out! and Self Titled) actually reflect the band’s current direction.  Take “Waterwings (And Other Poolside Fashion Faux Pas)” for the most radical example.  Listening to the tracks side by side, the one two punch of Dallas Green’s clean vocals and George Pettit’s growls now flow into each other so well that their interplay actually infuses the track with a new relevance in the band’s discography.  It’s as if Green and Pettit previously existed on completely different levels – maybe even a little unsure about how to reconcile their stylistic differences – but now interact like a fully functional family.  Granted, of the album’s twelve tracks only six of those are re-recordings, and only half of those are from the band’s earliest work.

As for the commentary, it’s witty and informative, but I doubt anyone would want to play it through more than a couple times.  So is Alexisonfire’s iTunes Originals package worth it?  Well, considering that fans will already have most of these tracks, the solid commentary will likely lose its luster after a couple listens, only three re-recorded tracks are different enough to reinvest in, and that the asking price is no different than any iTunes retail price ($9.99), I’m going with a big ole’ no.  Unfortunately the commentary is an all or nothing deal, so fans can’t cherry-pick specific tidbits of interest.  Thankfully the songs are still individually available, and considering how much of an improvement those few new recordings are over their old counterparts, those are absolute must haves.  But for everything else, just keep an eye on theAlexisonfire’s Wikipedia entry, and throw on Crisis or Old Crows/Young Cardinals and you’ll get the same effect.