Anywhere but Here

Mayday Parade

Atlantic Records

 

Anywhere But Here, Mayday Parade’s second full-length album, mixes unrivaled emotion with a clean musical style.

The album follows the story of an ill-fated couple, starting with a summer fling, moving through the fights, and ending with falling in love with someone else for real and gaining their acceptance. This formula taps into a very audience-appropriate phenomenon, considering this band's target audience consists of people in their mid-teens to mid-20s.

Mayday Parade’s style has matured so that they can convey heavy emotion through faster songs, although they still maintain the “make an album about love, sex, and break-ups” thing every other band in the power-pop and pop-punk genres use.

That said, lead singer Derek Sanders’ voice is tinged with honesty and true emotion, which is a rarity in these genres. This leads me to think he may actually have a true connection with the lyrics, a throwback to the way the genres, collectively thrown under the umbrella title “emo," used to be.

The band stands out clearly from their contemporaries because of their unique sound, as they are more bass-oriented than other bands, who prefer to stay on the treble side of the spectrum. Sanders’ voice is deep and slightly raspy, rather than high-pitched and clear.

While most of the songs on the album are fast and powerful fare, Mayday Parade proves they can have that same power in the album’s hidden gem, “I Swear This Time I Mean It,” a slow acoustic ballad for the girl who made everything better. The power in this song comes from the tenderness and care that Sanders puts into every word to make it perfect, not outward instrumentation and speed.

It's also a much more optimistic song than the ballads on the band’s previous releases ("You could crush me / So please don’t crush me / Cuz baby I’m a dreamer for sure"), about being in love, rather than losing it.

The album ends with just as strong a note as it began with “The End," a song where the album’s break-up victim is moving on and accepting it was a mistake.

Anywhere But Here is a great album: it’s original for the most part, it’s powerful, it’s relatable, and the best part? There’s no bloody celebrity collaboration.