Sparks the Rescue – Eyes To The Sun

There was an interview with Wade from Alexisonfire on MuchMusic that I saw a few years ago. It was during their “Video on Trial” show and they were picking apart Avril Lavigne‘s Complicated video and he made a comment that stuck with me all these years. He said something similar to “the reason everyone seems to hate this song so much isn’t that it’s necessarily a bad song, it’s just that its so damn catchy. Its simple bubble gum pop and one day you’re sitting in the dentist office and find yourself bopping your head and humming the song. It’s at that point that you’re like ‘I hate this song!'”

Sparks the Rescue‘s debut album, Eyes to the Sun reminds me of that statement. While it’s not nearly as catchy as Complicated was, the songs on Eyes to the Sun are still fall in the realm of simple bubblegum pop. However, even though I feel like I should hate this, despise it, rip it apart and then throw it away to never play again – I can’t. Instead, I kinda enjoy it.

The record doesn’t offer anything I haven’t heard before, but it’s just catchy and upbeat enough to keep my toes tapping and head bopping along with the melody. Throw in the occasional “woahs” in the background and songs like My Heart Radio become pop gems. It is, in a way, a throwback to some older Drive-Thru Records bands only with a much stronger emphasis on the pop aspect of the pop-punk sound. They alternate from sounding like The Starting Line to instantly sounding like Bryce Avery and The Rocket Summer. Listen to I Swear That She’s The One and try to not point on the Avery resemblance in both vocal tone and overall melody – it’s impossible. When they make it a bit darker (Autumn) or break out the acoustic guitar (Hello Mexico) they leave the super gleamed pop behind but still have some shining moments that poke through.

None of the songs are going to become top fourty hits because none of them are catchy enough to stay with you past the initial listen. There’s not a whole lot making them unique or stick out in the crowd; but they still remain above the generic emo sound and for that I give them props. Because even though they may be pop, but at least they stay away from the pop-emo of recent Fearless and Hopeless Recordsreleases.

Out of the eleven cuts, there’s only one track that really stands out as a massive failure – We May Be Cruel. On that track Sparks the Rescue tries to leave their pop tendencies behind and fail to do so. By trying too hard to sound like a hard rock band, the track just feels cheesy. It’s as if they mixed elements of Halifax, The Heart Attacks, Avenged Sevenfold, Bullets & Octane and mass amounts of extended guitar solos into one song; a mixture which clearly doesn’t work.

The overall summary of Eyes to the Sun is this: I doubt I’ll ever pull it out to listen to but if one of their songs happened to pop up on my iPod in shuffle mode I’ll happily tap by foot along and let it play through instead of skipping over it. Whether or not you want some extra iPod filler is your own choice.