An Angle – The Truth Is That You Are Alive

When I first reviewed An Angle‘s sophomore effort, We Can Breathe Alcohol, I was quite ruthless and ripped into the album mercilessly. There were a lot of reasons for my opinions on that record, and they are still valid; but over the past few years a selection of Kris Anaya’s songs grew on me and while I still disliked the album, I wasn’t really dreading the release of their follow up. However, that follow-up in question,The Truth Is That You Are Alive, did little to alter my opinions of the band.

Just like on Alcohol, Anaya has taken a decisively Bright Eyes-esque route with The Truth Is That You Are Alive. Every song follows the same format and structure that Conor Oberst has made famous the past few years; from the simple acoustic ballads to the full blown orchestrated tracks, An Angle constantly borrows little tricks and ideas from Oberst’s play books. This can be received in several ways, the first is that you love Bright Eyes and a second Oberst will please you completely. The second is that you love Oberst and the idea of a second band trying to rip him off is sacrilegious and the third is that you hateBright Eyes so you’ll instinctively hate An Angle too. I fit in the fourth group, the group where you’re relatively indifferent to Bright Eyes and the idea of someone tippy toeing on Oberst’s sound makes no difference to you – as long as the music can survive on it’s own then you’re happy.

Unfortunately, for the most part, The Truth Is That You Are Alive fails to survive on it’s own. While it does have a few solid tracks scattered throughout (Going To Heaven, Child In Me and Red Riverbeing the three highlights despite being drastically different from one another as the first is a folk inspired acoustic ditty, the second is back up by a powerful choir of vocals and the third is a sparse violin led track), it fails to hold it together for the entire course of the album. It begins strong, Oh! Oh! Oh! Trouble being another enjoyable cut from the record, but can not continue that momentum throughout. The songs become flustered and repetitive once it passes the halfway mark; and with all the songs clocking it at over four minutes it becomes lengthy too. So much so that it’s almost impossible to sit through it all and actually hear the closing track. Instead you’re forced to press stop and reach for a new CD, one that would actually entertain you throughout.

And that, in a nutshell, is the record’s biggest fault – it can’t survive the entire forty five minutes. A few catchy, folk-inspired pop songs are threaded here and there but they’re tied together with filler instead of a solid selection of songs so that there’s nothing keeping you tuned into to the album and nothing make you return to the album. And while it’s still a blatant Bright Eyes rip off, Anaya has developed a bit more of his own style too now, let’s just hope that on the next record he can get that style in more than just four tracks.