4 out of 5

Produced by: Tomas Kalnoky

Label: Victory Records

All that Kalnoky fury on Catch-22’s Keasbey Nights got me through many a furious high school nights.  And sure, some of my ska and angry punk records got the boot when I started wearing pants and grew out my nose hairs and called myself Man Mannerson, Mansquire… but Keasbey tapped into something primal, and its more narrative-style lyrics set it in a different class from its then-peers anyhow.  That Catch-22 turned into standard crap rock with Kalnoky’s departure just sort of added to that first album’s mystique.

I am sure I was not alone in shitting my pants when discovering Streetlight Manifesto, which was, essentially, Kalnoky and like-minded crew, updated.  And coming during an era of emo-rock acceptance – Taking Back Sunday, for example – it felt like a fitting doldrums-shaker.  I am doubly sure I was not alone in shitting my pants again when the opening track of Everything began, and it was like every wish fulfilled.  You don’t get these moments often: Expectations met and exceeded.  Kalnoky was just as fast and brutal, backed by a full range of musicians keeping on pace, only now the production was much cleaner and his narratives felt even more well-formed, updated from the fuck-it-all abandon of Keasbey to a more fist-pumping celebrate life mentality, but with pleasantly dark notes to keep it from being too preachy.  Not a new story, but generally interestingly told through songs about upstarts or the downtrodden.

But: Kalnoky has a lot to say, and Everything can only say it for so long before your ears become somewhat inured to it.  It happens about halfway into the album; after a non-stop string of rousing choruses and breathless guitar and drum wrangling, 6+ minute A Better Place… does the whole circuit, sad to celebratory, pop to rock, thrilling work the whole way through, making followup We Are the Few feel like a step back, and almost like a straight kick to the disc’s momentum.

Now, it speaks to the strength of every song that the album still works, and that I’m still happy to rate it highly.  It only take a couple tracks to get back into the swing, and then the latter half of the album feels just as strong as its opening.  I can’t even argue that sequencing would help, because the issue is more that the group brings their all to every song, and Kalnoky writes almost every track like an epic, so exhaustion was bound to occur, and having that hard stop in the middle is arguably a way to handle that.

It’s tough to say.  But after a million and one listens of Keasbey, wishing there’s been a followup, I’m certainly not going to complain that that followup gave me too much.

(Er, complain beyond this review, I suppose.)