Grown Ups – More Songs

May 18, 2010 • Topshelf Records

I was recommended Grown Ups as a way to help satiate my desire to hear more midwestern-style emo, a genre I'd been heavily getting into lately, and their first full-length More Songs turned out to be pretty good. Although its sound may seem a bit rehashed at first, the band brings a bit of its own flair to an old style with a lot of success and create a pretty good listen.

Normally I'd say that new midwest / indie emo would be a bit stale coming out in 2010 and it's true that a lot of Grown Ups' sound is heavily derivative from bands like Braid, Brand New, Owls, or The Appleseed Cast; punky songwriting with aggressive drums and vocals accompanied by mostly-clean twinkly guitars and some gang vocals: it's nothing we didn't hear fifteen years ago when this style was really taking off. But it is interesting to hear when the instrumental dynamic is a bit unexpected, such as a very fast, aggressive riff that has clean guitars playing along. It's unusual but it's a neat idea and usually works pretty well, even when there are shouted vocals and the bass has a bit of a distorted edge to it. This is especially interesting during the more pop-punk-sounding bits; it's just weird for me to hear such fast and heavy music played without distortion.

The album does get to dragging a bit, unfortunately; the songs are all very much the same and in the middle of it the album begins to stop being quite as attention-grabbing (not that it was much in the first place). It's unfortunate because they are playing a style I usually very much enjoy and don't mind listening to a lot of it at once, but here it would be nice to have a bit more variety. It doesn't help that the song structures seem very erratic and it's very hard to follow the music a lot of the time.

Regardless, this is still a pretty good album, although I don't think I'd personally recommend it to newcomers to the genre as it might be a bit difficult to get into (it took a couple listens for me). But they do play the genre well and are enjoyable for what it's worth.

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