Second to Last - Vessel

Second to Last are a Californian pop punk band that sound like they're secretly from either the Midwest or New England regions. They play in a style similar to bands like Title Fight, The Wonder Years, Handguns, and you can fill in the rest of that list yourself. It's not a bad thing. The deal with bands like this is that I can get into them and enjoy what they're doing, but I know that when I play them for my friend it's going to become an instantly polarized conversation. I just know that they're not for everyone. However, if you like the bands I mentioned a few sentences ago, Second to Last are for you.

'Vessel' is a four song EP, so basically just enough playtime for me to craft an opinion on this band. It's a good thing for me that there are four songs, because I only like half of this release. So if there were two less songs, I'd only have one new song that I like. And still, if there were like 12 tracks, there'd be 6 new songs in the world that I don't like. Actually, none of this makes any sense. For all I know this imaginary LP could have just ended up having 2 songs I didn't like and 10 that I found awesome. I never took a statistics class; fuck it.

These songs are pretty unimaginative and lack a good deal of creativity, but it'd be lying to say they're not enjoyable. It's whiny sounding pop punk music that we listen to when we're feeling a certain way and shit. Everyone has that vice. Well, everyone that doesn't go crazy and turn out a crust punk or something. The guitar leads are unimpressive throughout this record, which sucks because that honestly is usually the thing that keeps me interested in these kind of bands. The lyrics are pretty good though, I have to say. These songs definitely have sing-a-long potential among my group of friends. I honestly review on the weirdest merits...

I really like the songs "Feels the Same" and "Dry Spell" on this release. They're the catchier ones and feel the most complete as songs. "Feels the Same" being the catchier of the two, having vocal melodies that stick to your noggin. "Dry Spell" is mainly my pick due to the instrumentals. The intro riff is simple and cool and is accompanied by a very cool chord progression. The backing vocals in this song also cement it as a fine example of what this kind of pop punk can sound like when done right. The lyrics to this song also come across as passionately written...or that can be due to the awesome performances by the vocalists. It's something.

You can currently stream this album on the band's Absolute Punk profile, and we'll update this review with a link to where you can purchase this album on June 5th when it is physically released. It's not bad; you should check it out for yourself.

-Idle

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