5 out of 5

Label: Side One Dummy

Producer: Gene Grimaldi (Mastering)

Why was this the last album?  Just when Piebald seemed to grow up beyond the confines of the high school hardcore / punk scene, when they find just the right amount of maturity, they drop “Accidental Gentleman” and then call it quits.  I mean, I guess it’s better to go out at your peak, and maybe what made the band, to them, was the youth that this album seemed to finally put to rest.  Regardless, PB made a career out of staying in that nifty outer-ring of the spotlight, where the kids knew who they were and their shows would still get packed, but they weren’t headlining massive tours or name-dropped by mall-goers.  See how all those references are to the teen crowd?  It was an element to their music that seemed inescapable, and honestly, it was in part fueled by their lyrical matter, which stayed mostly to playful topics, lead singer Travis Shettel’s pipes like an older brother yelling out a favorite track while in the shower or something.  This was all odd for a band that started out on Hydra Head, but they seemed to go for it, and so did the MTV2 crowd.

Still, their hooks were undeniable, and despite the tomfoolery, tapping your toe to a song or two was in your future if someone put on a Piebald album.

Shettel still sounds the same on Accidental Gentleman but the compositions feel more full-throttle, the song structures looking back instead of naive navel-gazing.  If there was a feeling of laziness on previous PB releases, maybe the knowledge that things were coming to an end energized this album onto a heavier plane.  No track is filler.  It’s still a lot of fun, and it’s got a good, clean, happy feeling to the whole thing, but as Piebald waved goodbye with this album, instead of turning in a standard set of tracks to remind us of who they were, all players amped up their game and got us excited about where they’d be going – less to prove as teens, more to say as adults.