| CD REVIEW A Poetic Yesterday |
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Band : A Poetic Yesterday Formed in 2005 with a line-up including lead singer Gavin Stewart, guitarists/ backing singers Matt Youl & Rich Marshall, bassist Ryan Stewart, and drummer Dave "Davio" Yarnall, Midlands UK based act A Poetic Yesterday didn't exactlt chose the most popular of Hardcore sub-genres! Well, actually their sound is more Post-Hardcore, but the subgenre I meant is Emo! At some time the guys recorded a 4-track EP titled Lip Rings Covered In Lies, and enhanced it with a video for "Midnightmares". They also put in a heavy touring schedule right from the start, and were offered a deal with Rising Records in the Summer of 2007. But the boys would take their time getting ready for the recordings (as well as continuing their touring folly somewhat), first working hard to get a decent set of new songs written. APY eventually entered Red House Farm studios with Rising Records owner Mark Daghorn and the renownded Karl Groom as producers, to record the 11 songs that were to be the make-up of their full-length debut! As mentioned above, the band can be "categorized" in the Emo genre, mainly due to the vocal signature of the lead singer. What with the backing singers (and he himself) also adding frequent screaming, the Screamo tag also holds. But Gavin's voice is really quite pleasing once you've started listening to him, and the underlaying music ain't your simply 3-chord affair either. In fact, the band has already been compared to the likes of scene greats Alexisonfire, sounding like 36 Crazyfists, Hawthorne Heights, Killswitch Engage and My Chemical Romance jamming together. As per usual when you're talking about Emo/ Screamo, calmer passages are countered against more aggressive ones, but APY stretches the "typical" thing a bit more, opening the album with the furious "Firefighters Fight Fires" after a short and calm piano intro. Then follow a couple of songs like you'd expect 'em, when "Tony Jaa Will Kick Your Ass" surprises with more than just its odd title, adding several newscast samples to the whole. The ensuing "My Haistayl Defines Me" has a calmer opening (some 100 seconds or so), but then gradually takes on volume to expode with a truly aggressive finishing...and it's only a couple of songs further that "I Can Sea The Seller" brings the first true ballad (only instruments are acoustic guitar and some atmospheric string keyboards...if they aren't genuine strings, that is!) of the album. A nice sedate passage indeed! More balladesque antics come with "Serenade For Spiders", which however knows a broader filling instrumental-wize and some very nice effects on the guitar...if it ain't synths alltogether to begin with. There's other songs where some wacky effect brings a welcome variety to the whole, which greatly improved the album's listenablility to me...I mean, I've become somewhat weary of the typical Emo/ Screamo formula...and A Poetic Yesterday comes out head and neck above that kind of bands! Surf to myspace.com/apyarmy to find a total of 4 tracks ("Tony Jaa..." with its interesting samples and alljust recently added!), and if you're more into video, check out last.fm/music/A+Poetic+Yesterday. Live promotion for the lbum is apparently somewhat slow, with only 8 shows planned in November, and 4 in December, all of which are seperate events, not planned in a tour, and in Britain (for more details, check the band's MySpace page). Emo...I used to like it when the genre was young, because it was still fresh then. Meanwhile too many bands have wanted to jump on a bandwagon that couldn't hold 'em to begin with, thoroughly over-saturating the genre with acts that occasionally (or often) didn't bother to write decent material. Emo, I'll never like it as much as I used to, but as long as a band like APY comes along once in a while, I won't discard the sub-genre as a whole...and that's a promise! 87/100 Tony. |