Yellowcard – Lights and Sounds

Let me start by explaining my choice for best song.

You see, I chose Three Flights Up as my favorite song on the album because, at this moment in time, I love it. It is a phenomenal piece of music. An instrumental that I can play over and over again – it actually moves the album forward instead of just being filler. The simple fact that it is able to do so much in such a little time speaks for itself. It is simple and yet grande and delicate, and right now it is my favorite song. I’m sure in time I’ll move on and find a new favorite, but until then it will remain my favorite and a perfect introduction to the album. After all, Yellowcard has a lot riding on Lights and Sounds so the introduction is important.

While it isn’t their sophomore per say, it is the album which will determine whether or not they sink or swim. It’s their follow-up to the highly successful breakout album Ocean Avenue – but instead of taking the same structure that made they so popular in the first place, Yellowcard packed up to New York and started all over again. They came out with Lights And Sounds, a new album that is still distinctively Yellowcard but at the same time, distinctively different.

The band is no longer confined to the simplistic structures of pop-punk, and while there are still some pop-punk elements scattered throughout Lights & Sounds, the album leans much more towards a rock like genre. Meaning that they are experimenting with much more than ever before. Not only does Sean Mackin have his trademark violin, he has an entire twenty-five piece orchestra at his disposal. And he uses that orchestra to his advantage, especially on the acoustically driven How I Go – which seems to pull out all the shots with The Dixie Chick‘s Natalie Maines lending her vocals talents to the mix too. They even try a nice western feel with Benjamin Harper’s dobro on City of Devils.

The most surprising thing of the entire CD though is it’s ability to switch tempos constantly. They are able to switch it up from fast, upbeat songs like Lights And Sounds, Down On My Head, Rough Landing, Holly and Holly Wood Died to slower songs like Waiting Game and Words, Hands, Hearts without hurting the flow of the album. They only really mess the flow up once, and that’s with Two Weeks From Twenty, which features probably the best lyrical content (a fictional story about a US soldier killed in Iraq two weeks before his 20th birthday) but is the worst song on the album sonically.

Lights And Sounds is an impressive follow-up CD to it’s highly successful predecessor. It will definitely let them keep going up the charts without losing many fans. It may take them a while to get used to, but in the end it’s worth it. I just wish they had done a better job with how they distributed the two bonus songs (one going to Wal-Mart/Itunes and the other to Best Buy) – because that just aggravated a lot of people.