Like the first album we reviewed, This Is Not the End sounds like music I already know. Spielbergs sounds to me like Superchunk decided they wanted to start a Beach Slang cover band. Again, saying that some music sounds exactly like other music is not necessarily a criticism; there are only a finite number of sounds in the universe, so there are bound to be repeating music sounds, especially within particular genres. However, it really, really helps when an artist is plagiarizing from bands that I fucking adore. If Spielbergs want to sound like Japandroids-lite, then count me 100% in.
This Is Not the End is chock full of those heart- and fist-pumping anthems that I love so much. The guitars are loud, the hooks hit you hard, the drums are driving, and the catchphrases are yelled over it all and repeated and might as well be inscribed in a fucking tattoo already. "We could be perfect!!" By the sounds of it, they could.
That's not to say that the album actually is perfect. It's not. In particular, there are one too many post-rock sojourns for my taste, where the band ditches the anthems and latches on to waves of feedback and guitar sounds that float into the ether. Not that there is never a place for rhythmless static in music, it just feels out of place on This Is Not the End. I can't decide whether it sounds like the band was consciously beating the Japandroids comparison back with a stick or that they just needed some bloated throwaway tracks to boost the album from an EP to an LP, but either way, the lifeless experiments stop the album dead in its tracks.
Oh well! There are still enough absolute jams here to overcome the duds and make This Is Not the End one of the best albums of the year so far, in my eyes. I mean, shit man, put on "4 AM" and crank up the volume, and see how you feel. There's nothing like it.
GRADE: 4 pukes out 5
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