Valencia – Dancing With A Ghost

Valencia will always be a band that I remember because in 2005, when they released their debut album – This Could Be A Possibility – I liked it. It was slightly overly polished, but it was the exact type of music I was listening to at that time. In the intervening years, my tastes have changed and I can’t say I’m as much of a fan as I used to be. They released one major label album on Columbia Records called We All Need A Reason To Believe and while I remember seeing it, I don’t remember ever listening to it.

Now they’re back with their third album and second I Surrender release, Dancing With A Ghost; and just like my tastes have evolved since 2005, so has Valencia’s musical style. The band has progressed since their debut, leaving behind their pop-punk heritage for a pop-rock effort and it’s an evolution that definitely has its merits.

Dancing With A Ghost sees Valencia incorporating a much bigger sound into their music; creating a fuller, more complete effort.  They add some interesting instrumentation that sometimes work (the hand claps in the soulful ballad Still Need You Around) and sometimes don’t (the orchestration introduction to Friday Night that sounds as if it’s a page right out of The Nightmare Before Christmas or the horrible, radio feedback outro that abruptly ends on Consider Me Dead). Sometimes the instrumentation is unnecessary but adds a little extra flare, like the xylophone on Days Go By but it’s when they strip it all down and go straight for the by the numbers pop-rock that they’re really able to sell themselves.

On Losing Sleep they pull out an Ataris vibe with muted guitars and a steadily growing anthemic quality before they explode with the best chorus of the album. Throughout the album, other similarities to famed pop-punk bands continue to appear – like Somewhere I Belong that sounds like Motion City Soundtrack or Friday Night that borrows from the Fall Out Boy song structure (after the introduction that is).

But as I said at the beginning of this review, my tastes have changed; and while Valencia have evolved and matured as well, we’ve still grown apart. Dancing With A Ghost has the right hooks and isn’t a record that I think you need to avoid but it’s not one I’d go running to either. If it popped up on my iPod I’d let it play through but I doubt I’d ever go searching specifically for Valencia to play; because it’s still just polished pop-rock and that’s just not my cup of tea.