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Person L - The Positives

Rating

RIYL

Kickball
The Starting Line
Sherwood

Release Date

11/17/2009

Label

Academy Fight Song

Tracklist

1."Hole in the Fence"
2."Good Days"
3."The Positives"
4."Goodness Gracious"
5."New Sensation"
6."Stay Calm"
7."Sit Tight"
8."Loudmouth"
9."Changed Man"
10."Pleasure Is All Mine"
11."Untitled" — 5:26
12."I Sing the Body Electric"

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The Starting Line was a highly popular band during the early 2000’s up until their hiatus in 2008. Alongside other Drive Thru Records artists they created a brand of pop punk unmatched by many of today's bands. Pop punk as a genre has never been very vast in scope and the ability to experiment is usually not welcomed with open arms. I can see why bands like The Starting Line, faced with growing up and out of the pop punk image, would go their separate ways and forge new paths. This is exactly what lead singer Kenny Vasoli is trying to do, forge a new path, not ashamed of his past, yet ready to move on. Out of this need for rebirth came the band Person L.

The Positives is the second album from Person L, and it surely goes in an interesting direction. The Positives tends to be simpler in instrumentation and tempos. The spacious grooves of the CD led me to believe that maybe Vasoli was listening to a little post-rock when working on these songs. That being said, the album is not really that mellow a la some post-rock. Tracks like “New Sensation”, “Sit Tight” and “Changed Man” have an almost straight up rock feel to them. These tracks would have been better suited if they followed one another. Instead they are separated by a couple of throwaway tracks. This flub in track listing selection is jarring and produces the quick response to skip tracks.

The real let down to this CD is that Vasoli is really not a rock type of singer. Sure he has the ability to hit some high notes but overall his voice is really not suited for such music. The rock type screams and gravelly voicing is really not his specialty and should not be. The typical long “yeahhhhhhh” is used way too often and comes off as very amateur.

Lyrically Vasoli touches on his earlier endeavors and reflects upon them in a sort of cynical manner. The first track “Good Days” seems to speak of how with age comes understanding of how the things function in the real world. Could he possible be speaking of how many bands have these ambitions of changing the scene and these ambitions never really come to fruition? Or possibly that pop-punk is not really going to change the world?

The one thing I have to give credit to is that the songs don’t sound tiresome and repeats of old Starting Line songs. I can see where Vasoli is trying to head with this band. They are not really constrained to one genre and it is kind of refreshing to see a band try to branch out a little. Unfortunately the band doesn’t really succeed in all those different genres. The slow songs are kind of boring and as previously mentioned Vasoli’s voice isn’t really a great focal point for the band. He has certainly distanced himself from his previous band, but Person L really needs to come together and perfect this notion of being a more rock oriented band if they hope to have me pick up their next CD.

--Corey Mack