Just Surrender – If These Streets Could Talk

Incubators are a great invention. But what is an incubator exactly in this context? Well, they are small labels who get help from some major labels on their releases. The small labels help promote them, get them indie cred and releases a few CDs for them with the extra funding provided by the major label. And then, if the majors likes what they see, they have the opportunity to pick up the band and bring them to the majors. Why is this a great invention? Because, it helps us find some great bands that we normally wouldn’t hear if it wasn’t for the extra funding. One such band is Broken English‘s Just Surrender.

The band’s debut full length, coming out July 12th, is a nice refreshing look at the whole emo genre. It’s nothing too outstanding or life changing, but it is solid enough to make an enjoyable CD that you can listen to more then once without getting bored out of your mind. Think, Matchbook Romance, but not as boring. The vocals are strong and confident, not whiny and annoying and have a very keen sense of melody layered within them. There is more emotion and power in it, and it is a very promising debut.

Like many emo bands, Just Surrender is full of lyrical clichés, but none of them are done to the point that you laugh. Songs about love and lost, lies and deceit, and death and bloodstains are all splattered across the disc but are all done with enough sincerity that you don’t mind singing along with lyrics like “Take A Look At Yourself, Tell Me What You See. I’d Take A Bullet For You – You’d Put A Bullet In Me” or “I close my eyes and I believe you, if I should die, I’d never leave you.”

For a debut, If These Streets Could Talk shows some major potential. It’s no wonder that they’ve been tearing up purevolume. There’s only two downsides on it. The first is the track ordering near the end. They really should’ve ended it with the slow moving acoustic track Is There No Truth In Beauty, because that would end the album off beautifully. The addition of She Broke My Heart So I Broke His Jaw just seems out of place afterwards. The second is that some of the songs sound the same at times; but that should solve itself with time.