Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 3/5 Released: September 13, 2005 Reviewer: David Coats |
After three records, gospel/mainstream crossover rock band Switchfoot finally made a substantial impact with 2003’s The Beautiful Letdown, featuring the hit singles Dare You To Move and Meant To Live. The Beautiful Letdown proved so successful, in fact, that the San Diego band has basically been touring it constantly for the last two years, necessitating recording the follow-up on the road in spare moments, largely in makeshift studios backstage.
The resulting record, Nothing Is Sound, features powerful, riff-oriented, melodic and easily-accessible, four-minute pop-rock songs, including a litany of potential radio singles. In short, if you liked The Beautiful Letdown, Nothing Is Sound is probably just what you’re looking for, and just what you’re expecting. The inevitable downside is that while the songwriting and instrumentation are tighter than on The Beautiful Letdown, this record doesn’t represent a significant artistic growth for the band. The highlights are rebellious opener Lonely Nation, the upbeat, angst-ridden Politicians, and the blues-riff and harmonica of Fatal Wound. But aside from the spiritually relevant lyrics, which are noticeable, but not blatantly so, there is little to distinguish this release from many similar mainstream rock records.
Switchfoot likely have another commercial success here, which will again prove capable of reaching a variety of listeners on a deep emotional level – and watch how well Nothing Is Sound will be embraced by the gospel music community, where this is certain to be the most celebrated and maybe most polished release of the year – but for the most part this is basically a reliable, average rock record.
