Farewell - Isn't This Suppose To Be Fun?!

Band: Farewell
Album: Isn't This Supposed To Be Fun?!
Genre: Pop Rock
Label: Epitaph

Tracks:
1. Start it up
2. Anchors Away
3. First One On The Blog
4. Stay Pretty
5. War
6. Sing Baby
7. Eighty Eights
8. Zelda
9. September Brought The Fall
10. Cut You A New Smile
11. Hey Heather
12. Darling Darlene
13. Fed The Fire

It seems to me, there was a time when originality in music meant that you did something no one had done before and you did it quite well. It seems to me that in today's music scene, originality is more about mixing already existing ideas and hoping what comes out is 2x as marketable because you used two [or more] bands to take your ideas from. With this, we find ourselves looking at Farewell's, "Isn't This Supposed To Be Fun?!" from Epitaph records and to tell the truth, the band sums it up pretty well themselves.

At first glance, any "scene" music fan will find the very first band referenced in Farewell's act. The cover, depicting a "cute" drawing will instantly bring back thoughts of Hellogoodbye's debut full length released in 2006. It's a fitting similarity though, because the entire album uses similar electronic sounds throughout most songs, only Farewell's vocalist doesn't hide behind extreme autotune and other vocal effects [as much]. The album starts off with the fittingly titled, "Start It Off," which has the feel of an intro track, but turns out to be a three and a half minute song that seems to only have 5 lines of lyrics that are repeated about eight times. The music is pop punk gold, catchy drums and guitar riffs with little focus on standing out as much as entertainment. Now, I'm not against being entertained by music, I love the entire pop punk genre, but this is just repetition dressed as fun. The album really gets into motion, with, "Anchors Away," a catchy song sure to win over friend requests on myspace. The next track however, is the true bread winner of the album. The digital single, "First One on The Blog," is fast, catchy, pop rock with lightly placed keys to hook your feet into motion. I, for instance, was wondering between classes as this came on recently and found mys elf having to control the desire to bop along to what I was hearing. The problem here, is that following this solid track, we are met failed attempts to repeat the same greatness. Songs like, "Stay Pretty," "Cut You A New Smile," and, "Hey Darlene," come across as straight up attempts to win over scene kids with their parents money and, in that aspect, they may succeed. However, I think even scene kids know when bands are simply trying to hard to be the next big thing. I mean, honestly, how many times do we have to hear about girls crying by themselves, cutting you, taking back, taking over, breaking, or controlling a heart, running away, owning a city, and being on the road before we think, "Isn't there more to life?"

Epitaph is a label who had yet to foray into electronic pop punk before Farewell and maybe that was for good reason. The album, richly produced and filled with talented vocals and instrumentation plays like the b-side to all that's popular today. With the exception of, "First One on The Blog," the really wasn't much that stood out over the course of the 41 min. album. In fact, by at least the 20 minute mark, I too was in agreement with Farewell, "Isn't This Suppose To Be Fun?!"

GRADE: 5/10