The Maine - The Way We Talk

Rating

single starsingle starsingle star

RIYL

All Time Low
Mayday Parade
Daphne Loves Derby

Tracklist

1. If I Only Had the Heart
2. The Way We Talk
3. Give Me Anything
4. We Change, We Wait
5. The Town’s Been Talking

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Pop-punk is enjoying quite the revival. With Fall Out Boy and Plain White T's recent successes, they're bringing the genre up to date, replacing the girls at the rock shows with the girls that break hearts as the object d'art for 'troubled' songwriters, 2008 really is an open field for the next band to break out of obscurity. New to Fearless Records, The Maine not only join a roster of bands trying to do continue the evolution of pop-punk, but also join an explosion of bands promising the hooks and looks. So what can yet another band bring to the table?

Well, not the requiem, that's for sure. However, with the five tracks offered on The Way We Talk, The Maine definitely nudge the spotlight in their direction. Their signature sound exists just enough outside of the pop-punk standard formula to warrant a bit more attention. For whilst the hooks are sharp as they ought to be, and you're going to hear echoes of almost every pop-punk record you own over the EP's duration, The Maine employ a lovely, shimmering, indie sound across their songs that give weight where a lot of other freshman acts audibly lack it.

The opening two tracks showcase this sound perfectly, "If I Only Had The Heart", with its cute glockenspiel underpinning and gorgeous chorus and the title track's echoey guitars sounding more Interpol than All Time Low. The main area in which this band stumbles, however, is the lyrics. For the most part it is standard 'lifted from livejournal' fare, but a lot of the time the band sound like they're cribbing from Cute is What We Aim For ("Sex sells, and your sex cells make all the lost boys drool", "you're as fake as the moans you make"), a move that isn't exactly going to win them too much praise from anyone over 15. Also, with the first two tracks being excellent, the other three are simply good, with closing track "The Town's Been Talkin’" raising the standard by the EP's end.

All in all, The Maine have displayed enough flair on The Way We Talk to warrant a fair amount of buzz for their debut. A more mature approach to lyrics and a further exploration of the less generic aspects of their sound could boast surprising results.

--Alex Davies

Last updated: 09/29/2009 08:59PM

Comments

Composing
01/25/2008
07:40AM
Age: 25
Location
Waterloo, Ontario
I got this ep in the mail last week and I've probably listened to it about 15 times through. It's nice because its just about all the pop-punk I can handle in one sitting in between other things. I definitely agree that the lyrics are straight Cute port and I think that Cute does it better in that respect. Overall I'd say that this ep sounds like a mashup of Cute Is What We Aim For and The Starting Line.

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