4 out of 5

Label: Epic

Producer: Dave Sardy

Man, ignore any onelinedrawing bias you might have (…that I had…).  Ignore Far’s previous release, which was deserving of its nothing-new lambasting it received.  ‘Water & Solutions’ is an amazingly satisfying chunk of 90s alt-metalishness with just the right dab of emo croon and lyrical insight to prevent it from sounding like the majority of grunged up heavy rock from the time.  According to wiki, ‘Water’ was written by lead singer Jonah, as compared to ‘Tin Cans,’ which is attributed to guitarist Shaun Lopez.  That would certainly account for the shift in sound from heavy blasts of riffing and Matranga’s screechy scream to a more melodic base from which almost every track will build to a notable crescendo, a musical divide that could certainly be followed to each of those guy’s next projects.

BUT – I must give credit to the element which brought me to the disc: producer Dave Sardy.  A billion years ago, a young lad told me that Far reached out to Sardy after hearing his work on ‘Aftertaste.’  The way this album apes the bass to guitar explosion opening (and general effort to insert a ‘groove’ into a song), I’d certainly buy that, but Sardy continued by embellishing with some keys where appropriate, and giving the group a much fuller sound than they can probably muster.  The best tracks here bear his hallmark of precision tuning that somehow sounds organic; production bombast that feels live.  Jonah’s thin voice soars out over the guitars, and Shaun’s love for amping up the distortion is kept in check for just the right moments.  John Gutenberg’s bass and Chris Robyn’s drums mostly just do the chore, but they’re given equal polish in the soundscape.

Though we do still run into some sequencing woes.  The first half of the disc is a badass rush of buildup, properly divvying up more emotional songs like ‘Really Here’ with the instant accessibility of something like ‘Mother Mary.’  The tightness of tracks 1 -6 allow you to fully sync into the feelings dredged up by Jonah’s half-vague, half-direct, applicable-to-all-who-feel-disenchanted lyrics (i.e. encompassing the entire age range toward which music of this nature was generally geared).  The depth of the title track; the fury behind ‘The System’; they really strike home.  But the spell sorta dissipates as soon as the disc’s weakest track, ‘Nestle,’ begins.  There’s no oomph behind Matranga’s singing, and nothing notable about the song structure to suck you in.  Its just a place to pause in the middle of the disc.  This is followed by the second weakest song (and worst titled) ‘In 2 Again’, which has some more confidence but still uses some of the whinier singing style from ‘Nestle’ and thus sticks to the bad memory.  And for the rest of the runtime, there’s no longer deviation in the songs – they all go for a slow build kinda’ thing.  Thankfully, these are all pretty excellent tracks – ‘Man Overboard’ a definite highlight – but function better when you’re try to listen to them individually and not in sequence.

However, the bursts of energy come frequently enough to keep you invested, and by the time you’re maybe losing the thread, the disc starts up again and you’re instantly back in it – that’s how reliably grabbing the first half is.

Which means that despite the overall imbalance, the positives here far (uuugh) outweigh the negatives, and if you have any alt-rock in your collection from the late 90s or beyond, chances are that group has obsessed with ‘Water & Solutions’ at some point… so you probably should be too.

(Yes, because you should do everything the bands you like do.  Duh.)