The High Court – Puppet Strings

There’s always been something about I Surrender Records that I’ve liked. While a lot of their bands have been hit or miss for me, I would still consider myself a fan of the label for some reasonn; maybe it’s because of the way it’s run or the sheer friendliness of label owner Rob Hitt (former Midtown drummer). Either way, when I saw The High Court‘s debut album, Puppet Strings, sporting a I Surrender logo on it’s back I was happy. Unfortunately, Puppet Strings fell quite hard into the “miss” pile once I threw it in.

Because the simple truth is that everything on Puppet Strings is something you’ve heard before. It is the perfect carbon-copy of every other watered down emo band from New Jersey, which is where The High Court happen to hail from too. Puppet Strings follows the same structure as every other new-wave emo act that the major labels have been gobbling up and throwing back at us for the past few years.

There’s really nothing new in the album, but that’s not even the worst part of it. The worst part is simply the fact that they don’t try to be anything else. Everything is by the book and perfectly scripted. There isn’t a single element in the music that makes them remotely memorable instead it’s just the same sound and style that labels like Fueled By Ramen have grabbed a hold of the past few years (can we say Cute Is What We Aim For?). The vocals bear a remarkable similarity to Panic! At The Disco and Fall Out Boy and the songs are all guitar driven pop-rock songs and there’s even the always necessary piano/acoustic ballad thrown right down in the middle of the album for good measure. The lyrics aren’t anything special either (I’ve got a laundry list of girls I could call up a to see, but they can’t hold a flame to you because you’re perfect for me) and when all of those elements fall together it just adds up for one long and monotonous album.

A few years ago these guys could have been hailed as the next big thing, but now its been done to death, and The High Court aren’t doing anything to help resurrect the genre. Too polished and too generic,Puppet Strings falls into the background right after you play it and once it’s done it just falls to the back of your CD collection to collect dust and be forgotten.