EVERY AVENUE “Shh. Just Go With It”
EVERY AVENUE are one of the many young pop-rock bands that Fearless Records has added to its roster in the past year. While a majority of these bands know how to write catchy songs rather well, they’ve often taken a beating due to the fact that all of their competition is on the same label. I do not want to make this review all about the label, but I worry about the bands because the last time a label did something like this it was at the expense of the careers of many, many young bands. Politics like this aside, EVERY AVENUE’s latest full-length, Shh. Just Go With It, is a clear improvement on their Ah! EP from last year, but it still is weak in many of the same spots.
For starters, one huge positive is that EVERY AVENUE have become a lot more streamlined than labelmates MAYDAY PARADE. The lyrics prove this outright, but there also isn’t as much of a Fueled By Ramen influence here. Basically, EVERY AVENUE write really hooky pop-rock songs. They are upbeat, overtly happy, and driven exclusively by the guitar hooks. The band avoids most of the clichés that bring this kind of music down, and they have a pretty sturdy vocalist who has the ability to flex, albeit just a bit. Two songs from Ah! are re-used which is fine because of the limited exposure the EP had. I wouldn’t go as far as saying there are any sure-fire highlights on Go With It, but rather a bunch of well-performed, slightly identity-less songs. Moving on, the somewhat INCUBUS-influenced rocker “Freak Out!” is about as diverse as the album gets, and the piano-and-drum-machine-driven ballad “Between You And I” is about as bad as it gets.
Shh. Just Go With It is much better than I had anticipated after hearing the extremely forgettable Ah!. The band definitely has strong songwriting abilities, putting them in a category of like pop-rock bands that numbers in the millions. At the end of the day, unfortunately EVERY AVENUE doesn’t have the personality to make it against such overwhelming odds.
Fearless
