Album Reviews

I don’t know if it’s just me, but listening to Annabel’s third album I got some serious flashbacks to Weezer’s blue album. Sure, there’s plenty of jangly guitars, busy sounding drums and Ben Hendricks’ barely decipherable vocals buried beneath the other layers that all spell Midwestern emo. But opening track “Another Day, Another Vitamin” starts off with a quiet little guitar line before exploding with the same kind of youthful exuberance and flair for catchy melodies that could’ve been lifted straight off of Weezer’s debut.

From there on they simply keep on going with the equally good “The Fortunate Ones” and the title track, which could quite possibly be the album’s best song. Even when they tone down the enthusiasm for the gentle “How To: A Self-Help Guide” or the ballad that is “Days In Between”, things never sound anything less than impressive. And as if they still had anything left to prove after ten badass songs, Annabel round out the album with the five minute closer that is “Nothing Good Gets Away”, where they somehow manage to capture all the different aspects of their sound in a single song.

Doesn’t matter how often you had a foul taste in your mouth when the term ‘emo’ was thrown around, these guys show you how it’s supposed to be done on their Tiny Engines debut.