Bayside - Sirens and Condolences

Indifference is a funny thing, but it seems to be the best word to describe how I feel about this album. Wrapping it up in a nice little package, Bayside pretty much sounds like a lot of other new rock bands. Partly like The Used, partly Brand New, partly Taking Back Sunday, partly the Starting Line, and partly any almost anonymous radio-friendly rock these days. It isn’t that the band or the album is particularly bad; it is just really bland and forgettable. Sirens and Condolences is twelve tracks of monotony. Each song sounds very similar to every other song on the album. A few, namely “Poison In My Veins” and “Kellum,” stand out as having enough melody and pop sensibility to be radio hits, but even then you can’t picture them being huge. Focusing on lost love and angst, the album doesn’t stray too far from the emo/punk/pop/rock mold of the day. Lyrically, the album does tend to refreshingly avoid the “poor me, the world hates me, and my girlfriend dumped me” point of view and instead realizes that a lot of the fuck ups in life tend to be our own fault. Self-exploration and the realization that the world doesn’t hate you, you hate you, is maybe a step forward, but the “poor me, I hate me, I screwed things up with my girlfriend” view can quickly become just as whiny and annoying. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the spawn of Satan by any means. The album just suffers from being an average rock record focused on the same old subject matter of depressed and angry teenagers. Of course, we all were depressed and heartbroken teenagers at one time or another, so I can’t slight them for that. But next time please come up with an original way to express it. [www.baysiderocks.com]