Taking Back Sunday – Taking Back Sunday
Rating: 
In the throes of musical depression, whining about it will solve nothing.
Although I knew about Taking Back Sunday a long time ago, I never listened to them. The first song on this album, ‘El Paso’, is actually the first song I heard by them, and it is a song that provoked my interest. Based on the song, which was spacey, and deliciously gritty, I expected a rather interesting, and ballsy album to follow it, but it seems we can’t win everything. ‘El Paso’ is the black sheep on the album, and while it creates excitement for the album, don’t expect anything as good as it. Taking Back Sunday’s self-titled album is a letdown, and not because it’s terrible – it’s just so mundane.
The album starts off decently with the first three loud, decently energetic songs, but directly after, the album takes a nosedive. We already knew that the band members were sick and weary due to their miserable, bleeding hearts revealed through their blatantly emo lyrics, but they just couldn’t resist shoving their mood in our face even further. An album that originally seemed decently passionate and energetic, ultimately rears its ugly head and starts crying. Tracks like ‘Who Are You Anyway?’ and ‘Since You’re Gone’ show us that album is just a collection of pointlessly whiny songs that are grouchy for the sake of telling us that. Songs are needlessly dramatic in the childish sense, and with the lead singer’s attempts at constantly sounding like a crying baby, we really get it. Yeah man, you’re unhappy, we know.
There isn’t much else to say except that the band members could really use a trip to Disneyland (the happiest place on Earth). You see, the band is so focused on sounding depressed that their music suffers from it. Even when the songs have decently uplifting choruses and/or melodies, they usually outright ruin them with absurdly poor lyrics and unpleasant, awkward moaning. Although having an emotional delivery in one’s vocals can often make music more appealing, Adam Lazzara’s delivery is appalling, and leaves us screaming for it to stop. Like the band members, the music is self-destructive, and although they try so hard to get our attention, I’m afraid no one will want to listen to such a contemptible noise. Despite a few solid tracks, Taking Back Sunday’s self-titled effort is uninteresting, and blatantly depressing.
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