Downtown Singapore – Understanding A Guarantee

Do you ever get that feeling that a music trend is being worn out. Every band and their mothers are doing it, the same style, the same sound, the same songs practically that it all becomes repetitive, monotonous, and boring. There’s pretty much nothing new that a new band can do to that genre to revive it until you find that one special band that blows away all barriers and breaths live back into the dying sound. This is what’s happening to the pop-punk scene, it is slowly dying and waiting for that one band to breath live back into it. Unfortunately, Downtown Singapore is not that band. Their new Ep on DCide Records,Understanding A Guarantee, falls into the group of bands that I was talking about earlier. It is the same pop-punk sound you’ve probably heard a million times before, but that doesn’t necessarily mean its a bad thing.

Downtown Singapore is your basic pop-punk band, but luckily they are exact replicas of every band out there. They do throw in their little bits of flare here and there which makes certain aspects of the songs stand out. The first part of that flare is the vocals. They aren’t whiny, boyish, or annoying. Instead they are more melodic and suit the music well. They are abel to move from soft melodies to harsher ones with ease – although they sound better harsher. That’s basically the overview of the entire EP. Most of the song start off more mellow, soft, kind of generic, then halfway through the songs they actually kick it into gear and start standing out. They put more energy into it, make it faster, harder, and catchier. And that’s what saves this EP. The harder sections takes them a bit away from the pop-punk cookie cutter mold, while not leaving their entire sound behind, and makes their songs stand out more.

Understanding A Guarantee wont make people fall heads over heels in love with the young band, but major pop-punk fans will probably really love the release; after all, it isn’t too bad a listen. It may not be the exact replica of every band out there because they are successful in making some major variations here and there, but you still get the feeling you’ve heard some of them before.