Eleventyseven - Galactic Conquest
Rating
RIYL
Motion City SoundtrackFM Static
Cute Is What We Aim For
Hellogoodbye
Label
Flicker RecordsTracklist
1. Initiation Sequence2. Love In Your Arms
3. Happiness
4. Fight To Save Your Life
5. How It Feels (To Be Without You)
6. It's Beautiful
7. Retail Value
8. Feel Ok
9. 12 Step Programs
10. Conan
11. Galaxies Collide
12. Program Terminated
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What if FM Static wanted to rip off Daft Punk?
For what that might sound like, check out Eleventyseven: a hybrid of electronica and pop-punk. Think of them as a few pulsing dance beats and some amped up keyboards fused with sugar-smack power chords and that silky emotional croon that has become the calling card for bands ranging from The Plain White T’s to Cartel. Everything pretty much stays the same on this album, falling well within this formula: really catchy choruses with tacked on verses, but with added electronic sounds to sound “original” (read: lame). Eleventyseven aren’t really onto something groundbreaking or necessary, as you can guess.
As the name of the band suggests, it’s a little childish, covering the typical subjects from conformity to girls breaking hearts. The lyrics are simple and forgettable, never being clever enough to justify repetition or offensive enough to remember. In fact, these lyrics make Boys Like Girls look hardcore (I mean, hey, they “get drunk and drive around”) while 11T7 (yeah, that’s right, that's the abbreviation Eleventyseven uses for short) are fawning over Conan O’Brian. At their core 11T7 is a friendly band for friendly kids that don’t want to thrash about but still rock faster without the angst.
The instrumentation is simple, but lends itself well to the lyrics, making even the most mundane into effective hooks for tweeners to shout back at them. Unfortunately, bands like Blink-182 were doing a better version of it about ten years back, and Fall Out Boy is doing it better right now. The band works the best when they drop the electronic shit and just try to be a regular pop-punk band. They’re effective at writing good, power chord driven hooks and powering through their songs at less than two minutes so you’re not too bored to listen to more. The electronic pieces of the band work only when they’re in the background, making them into kind of a Motion City Soundtrack clone.
However, after “12 Step Program,” 11T7 settles for cheap electro-pop. “Galaxies Collide” is pretty much a glorified ringtone containing no more creativity than default cell phone rings. 11T7 have some interesting concepts but don’t have either the creative drive or the capacity to follow through on them. They end up just making another cookie cutter pop-punk album, with mediocre to terrible lyrics and the token acoustic song (“It’s Beautiful”) that makes “Hey There Delilah” seem like it was written by Bob Dylan. It’s not that I’m immediately against this album because it’s a typical pop-punk record; I just dislike it because it’s subpar pop-punk. 11T7, go listen to some Blink-182 and take notes, because a galactic conquest this record is not.
--Matt McGraw
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i think im in love.
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Maybe I got mixed up. But my comment still stands, somewhat.
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