Secondhand Serenade - Awake
Reviewed by agloriousruin
With Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional in retreat for the modern/alternative rock prairie, emo kids everywhere were in need of a new acoustic singer/songwriter/sad kid to take over. And in John Vesely of Secondhand Serenade they just may have found him. There is nothing inherently wrong with what Secondhand Serenade does here: the guitar playing is simple yet effective and the vocals are actually quite well done, including some of the harmonies that, through the power of multi-track recording, Vesely does along with himself. Sadly, it sounds like an even further stripped down version of The Swiss Army Romance or The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most, which unfortunately leaves them stuck as just being the band who sounds like Dashboard Confessional. [www.myspace.com]