Safe As Houses – How It Feels To Be Erased

A friend of mine recently asked me how a journalist can objectively describe mediocrity while reviewing a CD, we discussed for a while and came up with a few different ideas and ways to describe that feeling depending on what side of the fence you are on. You could simply say that the record wasn’t your style, there are a lot of other bands that follow the same structure and its just not for you but others may enjoy it. On the other hand, you could still support the release saying you like it and enjoy it while still pointing out the flaws that make the CD fall into the mediocre category. I’m deciding to go with the second way to discuss How It Feels To Be Erased by Safe As Houses.

For you see, I like Safe As Houses‘ six song EP. At times it does seem long, and I remember the first time I played it I was shocked to see it was only six songs and twenty some minutes – it had felt like so much longer. But it soon grew on me, the vocals are strong and melodic – similar to Amber Pacific and the music is very slick and well-produced. While it never completely jumps out at you, it’s radio friendly emo sound is a soothing style to have floating in the background; and hell, the lyrics aren’t half bad for the style of music either. There’s something I like about “So open your window / turn up your radio / let them hear you sing out loud/ because outside your window/ the world needs a wake up call” and it makes me able to look past lyrics like “I’ll scream out this song / until my lungs fill with blood / until my throat closes up.”

However, despite the fact that I do enjoy this record and have no problem at all playing it over and over again, it’s all to clear to me that once I stop playing the record, it will be a very long time before I throw it back in. Because while it’s entertaining enough, it’s just a sound that is very mediocre and over done in today’s scene. It’s radio friendly, very produced and very slick emo fare following the trend of Anadivine or the Sub City and SideCho rosters and it makes them forgetable in a sea of sound-a-like bands and albums.

So to answer my friend’s question, this is how an objective journalist could describe mediocrity: It’s good, but nothing special, nothing new and nothing captivating. Yeah, I like them now, but one week from now I’ll have forgotten all about them.