There's a couple significant things that I always get confused about regarding Massachusetts. Well, one thing is just the spelling...I'm never certain about my spelling of that damn state. Another is the abbreviation. Whenever I see a band is from "MA" I want to make fun of Maryland, only to realize that Maryland is MD...and Maine is ME (not MI, as I assumed...that's Maine). It's all too confusing. Also, I had no idea Massachusetts was hiding awesome fucking bands until I did that Born Without Bones review, which led me to coming across this amazing fucking record.
I don't know who the hell The Hotel Year are, or who gave them permission to rock my fucking world with this 'It Never Goes Out' record, but I'm totally willing to forgive them for enacting the element of surprise, because this album should be allowed to do whatever the fuck it wants. Honestly, when your guitar tones and drums sound this fucking good, you should be allowed to murder a murder ( a word which here means "flock") of babies and get away with it. Add awesome vocals with great pop punk melodies and you have a record that destroys almost everything else released in 2011. No, seriously, this is one of the top five albums of 2011. No lies. It's 9 songs, and each of these 9 songs is a fucking triumph.
They have a lot of similarities to bands like The Promise Ring, Saves the Day, Latterman, and pretty much anything that shines in the world of melodic punk and slightly emo music. It's hard for me to not just go ahead and tell you that the first two songs are the best songs on this album (let alone some of the best songs released this year), but then it becomes hard for me to say so once you take some of the other songs into question. The sixth track "I'm Gone" is another song that I'd have trouble not placing as one of the best things ever. It sounds kind of like stuff off Brand New's first album, or off 'Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?'. Like many of the songs on the album, it shares a slower, more emotional vibe. Compared to songs like the first two, and the amazing song "Holiday", which have a lot more in the way of pop punk going on. By the way, "Holiday" is fucking incredible.
The last two songs are also a couple of the best on the album. The penultimate track being another hectic, emotional, melodic punk song. And the last one being a mix of some sort of storytelling song, with a lot of elements dipping into 90s emo and skate punk. Basically, it's a great song, which is pretty long... but if we're being honest with ourselves, we know it'd have to be 10 minutes longer to actually overstay its welcome.
So, what do you do now, dear readers? You can go listen to this record on bandcamp and fall in love with it. You can also download it for whatever price you deem it to be worth. It's recommended that if you actually have the ability to pay with a card, that you at least pay one cent for it, so that the free download can be saved for those without that ability. Uhh, I feel like I left a lot of humor out of this post due to the fact that it's 5 AM and this album rules and I don't really care. Jerks. Don't judge me. Did anybody else see Jhonen Vasquez's tweet stating something like, "What sucks is that I STILL am going through my Jhonen Vasquez phase." HA!
-Idle
UPDATE: This album is coming out on Mightier Than Sword soon!
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