Various Artists – Vans Warped Tour 2013 Compilation

A decade ago, I received The Vans Warped Tour 2003 compilation and was blown away. I immediately ran to the store to pick up the 2002 version and have collected every record in the series since (yes, I’m missing the first few ones, but they’re pretty hard to find these days).

The annual series, like the festival itself, became a highly anticipated release for me. 50 songs from bands crossing genres but all fit nicely under the punk moniker for less than ten bucks – it was an amazing deal. I can’t tell you how many bands I discovered through the compilations until eventually I became so in tuned with the scene that I already knew at least 90% of the bands before getting the compilation. It lost a bit of its charm as the compilation was no longer introducing me to new bands but I still loved it because the band selection was fantastic and it still helped introduce bands to thousands of other people.

This year, SideOneDummy and Vans Warped Tour were able to put together a track list that I wasn’t intimately familiar with and, just like it did a decade ago, The Vans Warped Tour 2013 compilation has introduced me to countless new bands I had never heard off before.

The difference is, I don’t really want to know these bands.

The Warped Tour has changed, it’s no longer my tour and you can scarcely call it a punk tour anymore; and this compilation reflects that.

At fifty songs, the compilation has a wide range of styles and bands to choose from; and while the amount of songs is great for hearing new bands, it can also be a bit long – the first disc being the best example of this.

Opening with the dismal pop drizzle of Never Shout Never, the compilation drags for so very long at the start. Going through a variation of pop bands, electro bands and dance music (seriously, Goldhouseand Itch?? come on!), the album shows the evolving “Warped Sound.” No longer is it skate-punk like NOFX and No Use For A Name, it’s now electronic dance music like Sky Kidx and screamo likeMemphis May Fire and it’s simply of no interest to me.

Twenty songs in, I’m reminded why I no longer go to the annual festival and I’m shocked to see that the first band to really grab my ears (other than MC Lars near the start) is Anarbor, a band I normally find abysmally boring but functions as a turning point here. From then on, the compilation kicks in – going for a style that is more in the punk spectrum of things and that I can finally get behind. In fact, the next three bands that come through all serve as proof that compilations are a great tool to discover new bands. Driver Friendly delivers a catchy, sing-along pop-punk ditty that wouldn’t be amiss amongst the 2005 compilation, Beebs and Her Money Makers sounds like an updated Dance Hall Crashers and Mighty Mongo are a female fronted Aquabats.

So as Bring Me The Horizon kick off the second disc, Vans Warped Tour 2013 starts to have promise. In fact, the second disc saves the album and functions as a throw back to what a good, varied compilation disc can be. There are some weak tracks (I could easily go without the guttural growl of The Black Dahlia Murder, the forgettable Citizen and electro-hardcore of We Came As Romans), yet appearances from The Used, The Wonder Years, and the Tegan & Sara styled Allison Weiss give the album a diverse yet solid offering.

It is, however, the last eight or nine songs that will keep me pulling out the disc in the future though. Mixtapes, Motion City Soundtrack, Stawberry Blondes, Big D & The Kids Table, Handguns, The Exposed. We have varying degrees of pop-punk, ska, skate punk and more – both from established bands and up and comers. This is what The Vans Warped Tour compilation is supposed to be: a mixture of styles all within the punk rock spectrum that will pull fans in from various corners and expand their  musical pallet just a bit.

It’s just sad that the first half of the compilation is so devoid of anything even remotely close to punk, that the second half can’t redeem it no matter how hard they try.