Plain White T’s – All That We Needed

Plain White T’s first appeared on my radar screen back in August of 2002 with their debut Fearless Records release, STOP. I remember liking it, it wasn’t anything spectacular that really kept me entertained for months, but it lasted a few spins before ending up falling amongst my CD collection. Since then I hadn’t really listened to them much, so when Fearless announced their sophomore release, All That We Needed, I was unaffected. I knew it wouldn’t be one of my favorite CDs of the year nor one of the best, so really I didn’t care about it. Then I got the CD, threw it in and pressed play, and just as the CD titled track started playing I just though “wow. This is good.”

That feeling never left me throughout the entire time I was listening to the CD, and it stayed with each play afterwards too.

All That We Needed is not the most innovative release ever release, hell, they even say that in Sad Song (“There’s nothing new/ it’s all been done before/not looking to settle the score/ so please let me be“); but nonetheless, they do it well and better then half the bands out there. There energizing pop-rock/pop-punk tunes are energizing, fun, catchy, and follow very closely to that of Jimmy Eat World‘s more partyrific songs from Bleed American. The song structures are basically verse-chorus-verse-chrous and so on, which you can’t help to sing along with. Lead vocalist Tom Higgenson dropped the guitar on this release to focus solely on vocals duties and it works. He vocals are stronger, quicker, and more powerful supported easily by Mike Refondo and Tim Lopez, making it much more enjoyable and catchy.

Throwing you a giant curve ball, Plain White T’s end All That We Needed with a soft, harmonious acoustic track called Hey There Delilah. This soothing song ends the album perfectly by showing the softer side of the band with the beautiful love ballard.

They aren’t all love songs though, and they prove it with the lethargic Lazy Day Afternoon and the angry Revenge. All in all, All That We Needed ended up blowing me away as it is just a great pop-rock album which will please almost anyone.