Probably shouldn’t think
Does this gloominess remind anyone else of London?
Album: The Narrative
Artist: The Narrative
Summed up in one word: Uh… Narrative?
Would I recommend to others: Yep.
Animal it reminded me of: The female singer’s voice was peaceful so i’ll say a peaceful butterfly. No idea about the songs with the male singer. He kinda reminded me of Simple Plan but they aren’t animals…
Situation this album definitely ISN’T suited for: Every single torture scene in the book 1984.
Conveniently, when I finally came around to trying out this band, they’d released a new album pretty much on the same day. Great timing.
Most albums seem to start with an okay song. One which isn’t amazing but isn’t too lousy either. Like a nice middle ground. They don’t show all their cards straight away but they don’t just place down a 2 either (say we’re talking poker here and not some game where 2 is actually a high card). It felt to me like The Narrative didn’t really decide to follow this rule and played their best card first. “Fade”.
I found that already after only listening to “Fade” once, it was already stuck in my head. I loved the lyrics and loved the singer who I thought was quite good. I loved this lyric – “We probably shouldn’t think, cuz thinking leads to questioning and circles you right back to the start”. I’ll avoid a whole philosophical discussion but I thought that was a really interesting thought. Probably shouldn’t think about it. Also, in case you’re wondering, SongMeanings.net and LyricsMania.com both said that cause should be spelt “cuz” so I’ve left the lyric like that.
I wasn’t sure what genre this was, though if you read this blog regularly (I’ll continue to convince myself there’s at least one person who does…) you’ll know my skills in detecting genre aren’t brilliant. According to Suzie (the awesome female singer who suggested I listen to them over Twitter), their music is indie pop. iTunes says that it’s pop. More importantly, when the word iTunes is at the start of a sentence, should it get a capital letter? Why does Apple have to mess around with grammar and name their products with a lower case letter at the start?
One thing which stood out at the start of the album is that they alternate between two main singers. Some songs have a girl singing while others have a guy. I thought the girl had a great voice and really brought me into every song but I didn’t really find the guy drawing me into the song like she did. I mean, he wasn’t an awful singer, so I’m not sure what it was.
The idea of having the main singer alternate was a pretty cool idea though. It ended up feeling like I was listening to two different bands… the feel of each song seemed to change with the singer. Definitely liked the girl better. Sorry dude singer, if you ever actually read this – you can make it up to me and regain some awesomeness points by attempting a cover of a Tenacious D song. Actually, it would be really interesting to see The Narrative do a Tenacious D cover… maybe every band should be required to do a Tenacious D cover before releasing an album. I think that’s a new rule I’ll put into place if I’m ever in a position of power. I think The Narrative could pull off Wonderboy.
Thanks to Suzie for her suggestion! If you have a suggestion, no matter who you are, tweet at me @thatpatrickguy or contact me on that email thing. Or send me a singing telegram.
