Cobra Starship – While The City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets

Oh Midtown, what happened to you? You were on top of the world when Living Well is the Best Revenge came out, then came all the kaffufel with the labels which kept delaying the follow up. Finally it saw the light of day and received a warm welcome from the crowd, and then what happened? I don’t know, but the band just sort of fizzled out and disappear. Now, Gabe Saporta is back with a brand new solo project, Cobra Starship, and his debut,While the City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets. And while it’s far from being the worst album released this year, it’s also far from being anywhere near Midtown standard.

First off, the album kicks off with a horrendously slow, monotonous and just plain boring acoustic track. It makes you cringe at the thought of what’s to come and quite frankly, it’s a passable track every time. For an introduction to a new band, it was a pretty bad choice. Luckily, Saporta picks up the pace with the insanely addictive and instantly infectious Send My Love To The Dance floor, I’ll See You In Hell (Hey Mr. DJ). With a catchy chorus (very similar to Madonna‘s classic Hey Mister DJ) you can’t help but sing along. The song also gives the listener a much more accurate picture of what to expect from the rest of the album. Tons of samples and effects played back through a keyboard or something along with a variety of drum loops to get the back beat moving topped off with the slightly computerized vocals. While the edited vocals still have that certain Saporta feel to them, at times it would be almost impossible to point him out as the same singer. The effects can be too layered at times to the point where you can easily tell that they’ve been sent through filters to get that desired distorted effect. At times it fits the music, but at the end of the day you want to just hear a singer sing with his true voice.

Still, sometimes that may be just what Saporta was going for. A song to distract the listener, have them tapping their feet and singing along, ignoring the slight overuse of sound effects, drum loops and vocal editing – and he succeeds at that. You can’t deny the immense fun factor in songs like Pop-Punk Is Sooooooo ’05 or It’s Warmer In The Basement. While at the same time, he’s also able to slow it down a bit with The Kids Are All Fucked Up and You Can’t Be Missed If You Never Go Away. The lead single, Bring It (Snakes On A Plane) also features guest vocals from the singers of The Academy Is…, Gym Class Heroes and The Sounds.

This whole album definitely has its ups and downs. It shows a very different side of Saporta then what we saw with Midtown and does have a few shining moments. Still, you can’t forget that more than a handful of the songs on here are simply forgettable and there’s not quite enough power there for them to truly rule the streets as the rest of the city sleeps.