City Lights – Acoustic EP 2

Columbus, Ohio’s City Lights  is not completely dead yet. There is an acoustic spring in their step a year after announcing their breakup. Acoustic EP 2 is a quick five point plan for retirement. A quick walk through the death throws of a band, brought to you by InVouge Records. 

For a band that has been dead for a year, Acoustic EP 2 has a clean production value that is enhanced by the crisp harmonizing between band members. “Truth Is” is a great example. Harmonies are pure pop punk, pure youthful angst. “Cold and Grey” is vindictive in a men’s rights sort of way–though it might as well be a call to the rest of the band as well. 

Jeremy Smith can be interpreted in two ways: one, he has some relationship issues. Two, he has some relationship issues with his former band mates. Seeing as these songs are acoustic retoolings of earlier tracks, it might be easy to write off the vitriol as old and used–yet there are new demons to excise in this ep. “The Dark Side”  uses Star Wars to ask for positivity. “Jeremy’s Song” is better stripped down–“Why is it that the closest of friends sometimes are the first to lose faith/ and the first to betray.” A moot point, in the end, it seems.

Acoustic EP 2 should satiate City Lights fans. It is nothing groundbreaking, nothing that will shock you, but it is a late season yield to a band that walked into the sunset of winter long ago.