5 out of 5

Label: Victory

Producer: Tomas Kalnoky

Well, it’s doubtful the ‘Somewhere’ will win any new converts to the scene, as Streetlight is still firmly rooted in the fast and hardcore punk/ska thing that lead Kalnoky knocked outta’ the park back with Catch-22 for Keasbey Nights, this is still a pinnacle of a genre, an album that shows that you can stay fully recognizable with a tag – I mean, this is punk/ska or ska/punk or whatever the hell else you wanna call it but it’s not “folk-fusion post-rock” or some other attempt at creating new concepts by throwing a theremin into the mix – and yet still blow the doors off of it.  SM already sounded fresh on their previous album, ‘Everything Goes Numb’, but Kalnoky is forever restless and it wasn’t certain how long Streetlight would be around, so the album carried a swan song feel to it already.  ‘Somewhere,’ on the other hand, is almost all energy, all notable tracks.  Whenever it slows down for a moment and I think that we’re getting to a lesser-than track, a chorus or rhythm kicks in and I’m reminded that – no, wait, this might be my favorite song on the album.  Kalnoky’s song structure is still a little long-winded – there’s generally one extra chorus/verse to each song than you’d expect – it’s what prevents it from getting to just sort of a noise level where you hit stop because you’ve had enough pummeling for a while.  Balancing this out is the album’s runtime, which I’m pretty sure is shorter than ‘Everything Goes Numb’ (Yeah, by about ten minutes) but that’s perfect – you get 10 solid tracks of bang for your buck that end just when you’re ready to call it quits, so you’re not dragging yourself to that last track just ’cause it’s there.

‘The world sucks but stand up tall and give it the middle finger anyway’ has long been a theme for punk and for Kalnoky, but what seemed to set his lyrics apart from the norm were the stories he’d set to these themes.  And seemingly not the ‘he was a drinkin’ buddy’ tales that populate some of the respectable fringes of punk, but rather massive chunks of words about random elements from (maybe) Tomas’ life mixed with metaphor and contemplation, all delivered with such straight forward energy that you’re moved to pump your fist from pretty much the first throaty word.  But ‘Keasbey’ and ‘Everything’ were still dotted by some cheesy elements, some typical ‘fuck yous’ and whatnot that sound dated.  ‘Somewhere’ is a lot of gang vocals and still mines the same territory, but it’s swiped over with a jaded positivity (if that makes sense) that, again, re-energizes everything and adds a nice slather of maturity onto things.

Yup.  These are the peaks, babes, and we’ll see what awesomeness Kalnoky next delivers on our doorstep.  Part of the key to his continual success, methinks, is the lack of “one album a year” rush.  So it’s painful waiting like 6 years for a proper album, but I’m willing to bet it’s for the sake of quality.