Saves the Day
Sound the Alarm
Vagrant Records

Three years removed from their last album, Saves the Day waste no time in getting their point across on their latest, Sound the Alarm. The record’s first track, Head for the Hills, is a scorching re-introduction to the band and a proud proclamation that ‘We’re back and we’re angry.’ With all that has happened recently it’s understandable why songwriter Chris Conley and band would be. After the disappointing reception to their major label debut, In Reverie, the band went through a hellacious period that saw the band literally fall from atop its perch and lose its up-and-coming status. Eventually Saves the Day were released from their major label contract and cast back into the wild, sparking internal conflict that led to the dismissal of long time bassist Eben D’Amico. Without label and bassist, the band was then met with the scary expectations of disgruntled fans who were split in two camps: those expecting a return to their sophomore album Through Being Cool and those wanting a continuation of Stay What You Are. The album that Conley and crew would eventually go on to record, however, would be neither.

Sound the Alarm is the fastest, angriest, and most emotional album Saves the Day have ever released. The strong emotions are conveyed not only through the lyrics, which make a triumphant and amusing return to the darkness of Through Being Cool-era Saves the Day, but through Conley’s actual singing voice. The passive delivery he employed on In Reverie has been upgraded considerably with a snottier and more aggressive snarl that adds bite to the already upbeat tracks. As a whole the band has returned with a new, surprising attitude.

Listening to tracks like The End, Delusional, and Hell is Here, it is strikingly clear that someone or something must have lit a fire beneath Saves the Day during their magical trip to In Reverie land. Somewhere between the US tours with indie pop bands and singing about dandelions, melon skies, and receiving foot massages from ghostly apparitions nightly, Conley and the band tapped into a reservoir of anger, restlessness, and attitude that has sat dormant since Through Being Cool was released in 1999. The most significant result of this re-awakening is the amount of needed energy and drive it has added to the band’s new post-In Reverie melodies and song structures.

There are several instances on Sound the Alarm that make you wonder how much better In Reverie would have been had they had injected this same amount of passion into the record. The chorus and bridge on third track Shattered are lifted graciously from In Reverie’s play book and, thanks to the band’s more active approach, they work to much better effect. The long winded vocals and guitars mesh here, giving the illusion of a falling wall of sound, whereas in the past they might have just floated along without invoking the same kind of imagery. Conley has smartly stripped the fat from his most ambitious outing, keeping what worked and using it wisely when needed.

Another noteworthy observation about Sound the Alarm is the absence of a strong, clear direction. Every record leading up to it has had its own self-contained sound- Cant Slow Down’s fast, amateurish pop-punk, Through Being Cool’s dark & defining emo-rock, Stay What You Are’s moody pop rock, and In Reverie’s head scratching catapult into indie pop territory- yet Sound the Alarm is the first Saves the Day record to experiment outside of itself and openly borrow from its peers. The fade in effect just before Eulogy’s chorus is something you never would have heard on older albums. The guitar on Say You’ll Never Leave, vaguely reminiscent of older tracks like Third Engine and Banned from the Back Porch, wouldn’t seem out of place on a Thrice/insert-any-melodic-hardcore-band-name-here record. Diseased sounds like Green Day’s Worry Rock, which in turn sounds like 20 other songs you’ve heard before. While these comparisons might sound like a negative observation, Sound the Alarm actually benefits from the diversity.

As sad as it may sound, Saves the Day will probably never release another album as influential as Through Being Cool or Stay What You Are. Sound the Alarm sounds like the work of a band who understands this and has decided to forgo ingenuity in favor of creating the most entertaining album they can make. If fans are able to make this same acceptance they will be treated to what is easily the most entertaining and varied effort by the New Jersey band. Even with the benefit of hindsight, Sound the Alarm is the best possible follow up to a disappointment like In Reverie. It incorporates glimpses of past albums while still opening the door for experimentation. The only thing more exciting than the record itself is the thought of where Conley and Saves the Day may be heading next.

MP3
The End

Websites
Saves the Day website
Saves the Day Myspace page