We start things off with the song "Lost", a track that has been around for a couple of years, but makes its debut as a polished, enhanced studio track with excellent vocals brought to us by Jared Walsh and Chris Norton who contribute a great deal to the band's melodic framework and set the bar pretty high for the rest of the album to follow. "Have One on Me" is a thumping, bombastic track coupled with an exquisite drum pattern brought to us by Dan Norton and sees the band keeping things level with an organic blend of indie rock that can't be compared to any one particular artist and is something entirely of their own creation. "She's Got A Way" is a finely tuned, cohesive blend of mid-tempo guitar rhythms mixed in with a strong musical sensibility that also shows off the well rounded nature of the group that is in full force here and bodes well for the latter portion of the album to follow.
The second half begins with my favorite track off the album, "Stay" an absolutely terrific track featuring gentle acoustic guitar melodies and top notch vocal syncopation that really gets it right from the start and sees a band sticking to the script and focusing on what they laid out when they were in the studio during the recording process. "On The Shelf" is a fast paced, musically toned track that features deep, pulsating guitar licks that move at a pretty good clip, and gives you the opportunity to experience other facets of the band that they haven't had the opportunity to express up until now. We get ready to close out the album with "Young", a slow and steady rocker that features terrific vocal interludes that meld together beautifully with the instrumentation at hand to create a resonating track that does a great job of setting up the final song on the album. And the final song on the album is "Ghosts", a sensational, echoing track that brings in all the musical elements we've heard in some capacity in the earlier stages of the album, and gives us an encapsulated overview of what we've experienced so far and how we got to this point as the album fades to black. I featured these guys as an Artist Spotlight feature about 2 years ago, and I had an inkling that these guys had a good musical formula that was in the process of solidifying, and I was fascinated to see what the fruits of their labor would bear down the road. Here we are a couple of years later, and the band has created a terrific effort that realizes the vision I laid out in my article, and sees the beginning stages of a band well on their way to a promising and long lasting career.
All together, a terrific and well envisioned debut album from Barricades, a band that has a definite vision of where music fits into their everyday lives, and realizing the importance of maintaining a strong and sound musical cohesiveness that will continue to serve them well moving forward.
Album Score: 4/5
Track Listing:
- Lost
- Have One On Me
- Mannequin
- With Perfect Aim
- She's Got A Way
- Stay
- Sunset
- On The Shelf
- Young
- Ghosts
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