Last year was quite an eventful one for Mandeville, La. indie rock quartet As Cities Burn. First, they decided it was time to split up. Their fan base, devastated to hear the news, rallied behind them and eventually convinced them to stick together. Lead vocalist T.J. Bonnette jumped ship and became a family man, but brother Cody, already contributing some vocals and serving as the group’s guitarist, willingly took the reins as the group’s new voice.
The difference? T.J. screamed. Cody didn’t. As a result, there is an almost complete absence of screaming on the recently released sophomore effort “Come Now, Sleep.”
Recorded earlier this year in February and March, the group follows up their debut respectably despite the adversity they faced.
Fans of the group’s breakout release, “Son, I Loved You At Your Darkest,” won’t have too much to complain about despite the subdued tone of Cody Bonnette. He actually has a pleasant, yet versatile, voice. Weirdly enough, it’s not difficult to trace a little Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie) in his pipes, but this isn’t exactly a bad thing. Just listen to “Contact,” the lead-off track.
It hints at ambition, clocking in at almost seven minutes. It flows well, though. There isn’t any difficult instrumentation here, just really great melodies and well reformed transitions between each phase of the song. It starts out softly and unassumingly before building intensity, and coming to an abrupt halt and ending similarly to the way it started. That’s traditional structure, but it works, and it starts the album off really well.
Bonnette cuts loose on “Empire,” once again playing nothing mind-blowing, but it sounds great. The mix is, for the most part, well-balanced, bringing out Bonnette’s more distorted guitar just enough. It takes a little concentration to hear his vocals, though, and he somewhat errs on the side of Taking Back Sunday when he reaches higher registers. No one is doing anything mind-blowing here. Colin Kimble is playing fairly traditional progressions on bass guitar and drummer Aaron Lunsford is sufficiently providing the appropriate touches and little else. The sounds of Bonnette and Chris Lott guitars are certainly the most prominent things going on for much of the album, which is acceptable because they both prove throughout to be very capable and tasteful in their styles.
The quality and staying power of the following songs is respectable.
There isn’t much here that will make permanent waves, but the important thing is the good quality stays intact for a majority of the time.
Songs such as “The Hoard” and “Tides” get a little repetitive and don’t have the staying power of the album’s opener, while good moments in “Our World is Grey” and “New Sun” keep the experience worth following without a lot of fast-forwarding.
The album doesn’t begin to wear out its welcome until the sprawling closer, “Timothy,” which plods along quite slowly and offers nothing that wasn’t previously showcased earlier in the album. It certainly doesn’t justify its 13 minutes in length, but give As Cities Burn credit for overall succeeding in overcoming the hurdles of near-breakups and departed band members.
They likely haven’t done anything here that will stand the test of time, but they’re hinting at artistic greatness. They just need a few more years and a broader palette.