Switchfoot - Fading West

2004 was a weird year for breakthrough radio singles. If you look at the charts from that year, things don’t seem so out of the ordinary: the top two singles on the Billboard Hot 100 were both from Usher’s world-beating Confessions album (“Yeah” and “Burn,” respectively), with the rest of the top five rounded out by Alicia Keys, Maroon 5, and Outkast. Not such a different spread from the charts of either the previous year or the year that followed. Look at the rock charts, however, and things get a bit more interesting. Something must have been in the water at radio stations in 2004, because there were a few bands scoring hits that year that had never been on the radio before and would really never strike mainstream gold again. A few of them were debut artists, bands like Keane and Franz Ferdinand who are still making music today, but are doing so outside of the pop music limelight. A couple others, however, were scoring seemingly random hits off their fourth full-length records. The first was Modest Mouse, a blatantly unmarketable band that somehow managed to land two songs from Good News for People Who Love Bad News in the modern rock top 10. The second, as you probably already know given the review you are reading, was Switchfoot.

To be fair, Switchfoot always had mainstream potential. Prior to hitting it big on the radio with 2003’s The Beautiful Letdown (thanks to 2004 hits, “Meant to Live” and “Dare You to Move”), Switchfoot was making quirky indie-pop records with a gospel/Christian rock slant. While most people forget it today, Switchfoot was actually discovered by Charlie Peacock, the same veteran producer and label head that would send the Civil Wars to stardom nearly two decades later. “Dare You to Move” was initially on Switchfoot’s third record, Learning to Breathe, but failed to generate much radio traction, despite a feature in the Mandy Moore-starring film, A Walk to Remember. But as I said, something was in the water in 2004, and the band managed to score a couple hits, nab a few inclusions on Now compilations, and immortalize themselves as torchbearers of the mid-2000s radio rock/adult contemporary scene. In that regard, they played about the same role for the first decade of the new millennium as the Goo Goo Dolls played for the last decade of the old one.

Fast forward 10 years and Switchfoot are still trucking along, even though they haven’t had a single on the Billboard Hot 100 since 2005. In many ways, they’re still a lot like the Goo Goo Dolls in that they’re fully aware that they will never have a hit again, but are still churning out solid albums with great high points nonetheless. Also like the Goo Goo Dolls, Switchfoot have never made an album that’s great all the way through (2005’s Nothing is Sound was the closest), though certain individual tracks from each of their records (“Awakening” from Oh! Gravity, “Needle in Haystack Life” from Hello Hurricane, “Where I Belong” from Vice Verses) are as good as any rock songs that have come along in the past decade. Each of those tunes found the band embracing their penchant for writing big, beating-heart anthems, and with “Where I Belong,” the last song from their last record, I found myself comparing Switchfoot favorably to U2. I don’t think these guys will ever play to a stadium crowd, but if they do, they’ve certainly got songs with the scope to pull it off.

Funnily enough, the band’s latest album – their ninth studio record – actually does use U2 as a template, just not in the way I might have imagined two year ago. The album, entitled Fading West, consists of music that was written to accompany a film of the same name. Described by the band as “part rock documentary, part surf film, and part travelogue,” Fading West was at least partially inspired by U2’s Rattle and Hum, a rockumentary that doubled as that band’s seventh studio record. Just as Rattle and Hum saw U2 exploring new ground in North American – on their tour for 1987’s masterful Joshua Tree – Fading West finds Switchfoot traveling the world in search of killer waves and fresh musical inspiration. Do they succeed? Well…sort of.

Albums that double as rock films are always a risk, first because many fans will simply bypass the film and listen to the record, and second because the songs risk becoming little more than soundtrack fodder. Both of those problems have plagued Rattle and Hum for years, with many music writers still regarding the film as a disastrous move that could have easily taken U2 into toxic overexposure territory and destroyed their momentum in the process. The album itself generally gets a cleaner getaway, with songs like “Angel of Harlem,” “Desire,” “When Love Comes to Town,” and especially “All I Want Is You” perpetually ranking on lists of the band’s best material. Switchfoot does well enough navigating the minefield of the soundtrack album, mostly because they make it remarkably easy for fans to ignore the film. One could easily listen to this record and simply hear it as the next chapter in the band’s story, oblivious to the fact that the music is at all meant to be part of something bigger.

Unfortunately, one could also argue that the existence of the film hampers the effectiveness of the album by not allowing it to stand on its own two feet. Supposedly, the songs on Fading West were born from the liberating situations Switchfoot’s members experienced while traveling the world, observing a plethora of gorgeous locales, and losing themselves in the surf. On paper, this all sounds like a great idea, not only because the band has been built from the beginning on the dual passions of music and surfing (the name “Switchfoot” is a surfing term, after all), but also because transformative world travels often give songwriters the fuel they need to bring new sounds and thematic elements into their wheelhouse.

In some ways, then, Fading West is a great success, simply because it’s the most optimistic, invigorated, and downright happy these guys have sounded in years. After 2011’s dark, grunge-infused Vice Verses and 2009’s yearning, lovelorn Hello Hurricane, it’s good to hear the band sounding like they’re on the top of the world, and Fading West is packed to the gills with big, hopeful anthems. “Love Alone is Worth the Fight” kicks the album off in precisely this vein, with an atmospheric vocal loop and a serenely catchy chorus that makes you feel as you’re either resting in the eye of a hurricane or shooting through the center of a wave. “When We Come Alive” sparks with the same oceanic hugeness, thriving off “woah-oh” gang vocals and a pounding chorus that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on 30 Seconds to Mars’ This Is War. Intentionally or not, Switchfoot definitely hit the stadium vibes I wanted from them on this album’s best tracks.

But while the music is almost always pleasing, it rarely has the adventurous spirit that I also hoped this album would have. Listeners will certainly hear bits and pieces of the band’s travels on this album, with traces of world music influence showing up on songs like “The World You Want” and “Ba55,” but for the most part, the band’s influences have stayed disappointingly close to home. Spurred forth by ace production from scene veteran Neil Avron (Yellowcard, Fall Out Boy, New Found Glory, etc.), Fading West is mostly just a straightforward and bombastic pop album. Switchfoot cribs moves from fun. throughout (most notably on “Let it Out,” where the “Some Nights” melody is none-too-subtly reprised), and spend most of the record slinging sweeping anthem (“All or Nothing at All”) after sweeping anthem (“Slipping Away”). It’s all perfectly pleasant, with Avron’s beat-heavy production (accentuating pounding drums, booming bass, and handclap breakdowns at every turn) taking it to a higher place. Still, the lyrics are mostly generic, naval-gazing fare – a fact almost made too obvious by the cliché song titles – and the songs themselves feel a bit light compared to the material that we know frontman Jon Foreman is capable of at this point.

Fading West is most successful in its final minutes, with ringing penultimate track “Saltwater Heart” functioning as the record’s definitive mission statement. “Maybe I could wash clean all my landlocked dreams,” Foreman muses on the verse. It’s a great lyric in a sea of unremarkable ones, and it could have easily functioned as the tagline for the Fading West film. The album’s grand finale, meanwhile, a propulsive bulldozer of a song called “Back to the Beginning Again,” is just as good, radiating layers of acoustic guitars, synths, chimes, and fiercely pounding drums for a closer that recalls both the scope and power of “Grown Ocean” from Fleet Foxes’ Helplessness Blues. If the whole record were as explosive as these final two songs, it might have been Switchfoot’s best. As is, Fading West feels like a somewhat minor release from a band that has never lacked for dependability. I respect the guys for wanting to make a big, optimistic pop rock album, and they largely succeed, filling this disc to the brim with cascading waves of sound that will sound perfect come the summertime. With that said though, it’s hard to completely love Switchfoot’s take on Rattle and Hum when we’re all still waiting for their Joshua Tree.

Jim Ivins Band - Everything We Wanted

Jim Ivins Band - Everything We Wanted

Unsigned, 2012

Three and a half stars

Late last fall, I stumbled upon Late Night Drive, a solo EP from Virginia songwriter Jim Ivins. It was a beautiful, introspective collection of acoustic music that culminated in one of the best songs anyone wrote all year. That song was "House of Three," a viscerally emotionally ode to his mother and the times they shared together, and it's broken my heart pretty much every time I've listened to it since. Everything We Wanted sees Ivins back in the company of his band (a four piece, including his older brother on drums), and far more buffeted by electric instrumentation and pop production, but at its heart, the record is a very natural progression for him. Ivins, who has worked with the likes of Ace Enders, opened for bands such as Switchfoot, The Ataris, and Parachute, and listed artists like Matt Nathanson, The Goo Goo Dolls, and Third Eye Blind among his biggest influences, channels all of his musical experiences into a record awash with nostalgia, introspection, and big life issues, all to a modern pop rock sound that hearkens back to bands of the late '90s or the early '00s. Indeed, while Ivins and his band remain fairly underground today, the sound of Everything We Wanted made me wonder how the band would have fared a decade ago, when this type of surging, melodic pop-rock was all over the airwaves.

A bell-like guitar heralds the arrival of "Run," the sunsoaked rocker that kicks off the set and one of the many highlights therein. Ivins' vocals sound more full bodied and confident this time, replacing Late Night Drive's falsetto atmospherics with fist-pumping choruses and a more optimistic lyrical outlook. Pounding pianos accent the song's bridge, while a drum section and a distant vocal harmony dissolve the song and give way to the anthemic guitar sound that kicks off the next cut, "The Sight of Fire." Rarely do transitions sound this good or well planned, and "The Sight of Fire" actually ends up being a better song thanks to the extended lead in that "Run" provides. The song (also the first single), is a perfect showcase of Ivins' ability to wrap difficult subject matter up in pop sensibility. Late Night Drive embraced darkness and sadness more completely, in both sound and content, while Everything We Wanted is a heavily produced, muscular set up pop-rock songs that could easily end up on the radio, but bits and pieces of that darkness still creep in here. "The Sight of Fire" is a song about the debilitating effects of addiction, a fact that passed me by until the song's key line ("Cause it's funny how we kill ourselves/When we're trying to feel alive") hit me and made me pay attention. Everything We Wanted is a catchy and sonically pleasing record from the get go, but it's also extremely lyrically driven, and it became much more resonant to me when I really paid attention to that aspect.

Three of the songs here ("Run," "Rollercoaster," "It's Getting Better") have been re-recorded from Ivins' first solo album, and while there is a notable difference in lyrical maturity between these songs and the new material (especially with "Rollercoaster," where Ivins indulges in a few cliches, only to directly acknowledge that he's doing so), it isn't jarring. Ivins has gone on record saying that the duality of the songs and their content means to represent the journey his life has taken in the years since he started writing. Where "Run" is a song about feeling young, immortal, and limitless, and where "Rollercoaster" is an irresistible depiction of first love, many of the other songs on this record are coming from a man who has lost one of the most important people in his life and been battered by the world around him. In that respect, it's a record about growing up and coming of age, where the naiveté of those three songs gives way to songs about a person who understands that life really can get hard some times, but who is still fighting through and searching for the good.

But even as Ivins seeks to find himself in these songs, the ghost of his mother still hangs heavily over the proceedings. Never is this more evident than on the title track, which carries the record out in a moving and uplifting fashion. It's a song about picking up the pieces of your life in the wake of tragedy, and in that respect, it's really a sequel to "House of Three." Where the last EP ended with Ivins packing up his life and driving away because he couldn't face the grief anymore, here he's mastered that pain and is ready to move on. As the song floats through a couple of stunning verses and an anthemic chorus, carried along by the talents of his band and the pristine, radio-ready production of Pedro Aida (Carbon Leaf), he finally comes to the realization that life really does go on. And when he sings "I'm not dead yet/Now I'm finally alive" at the song's climactic moment, it's both a catharsis and a commencement to a new life. While most of my listening tends to revolve around full length albums rather than EPs, and while I do really wish Everything We Wanted lasted beyond its 23 minute runtime, these seven songs constitute a musical journey that is both relatable and fully formed, and the result is my favorite EP of the year so far; I can only hope that The Jim Ivins Band gets the attention they deserve for it.

Jim Ivins - Late Night Drive EP

Jim Ivins - Late Night Drive EP

Unsigned, 2012

Four stars

Virginia singer/songwriter Jim Ivins has been making the rounds in the music industry for a few years now, both as a solo artist and as the frontman for the Jim Ivins Band. He's opened for the likes of the Ataris, Parachute and the Rocket Summer, draws influence from Jon Foreman and Ryan Adams, and is buddies with scene hero Ace Enders: not a bad list of names to be associated with. His latest work is an EP entitled Late Night Drive, a terrific set of acoustic based songs with topics ranging from growing up, love (both lost and found), heartbreak and death, that will surely become the soundtrack for the night drives it's title suggests. Right from the first moment of the first track, when forcefully strummed guitar chords came cascading out of my speakers, I was reminded of City and Colour's album Sometimes. That record is still probably the saddest album I've ever heard, and from the very outset, Late Night Drive occupies the same territory of strangely comforting melancholia, though Jim Ivins bears less vocal similarity to Dallas Greene than he does to the likes of Chris Carrabba or Ace Enders himself. The opening track, entitled "Love's Like Snow," introduces everything, starting with a single guitar before the entrance of Ivins' soothing, falsetto laden vocals, and it's wintery, moody tone, sets the atmosphere for the album quite well. The exquisite "Riptides," is even better, showcasing some nice guitar work and one of the strongest choruses on the album, while bells accent parts of the song and add to the ambiance nicely.

The title track follows, this time with a synth line to accompany Ivins' strums. "What is it about the night that makes us think about the things we've lost?" Ivins sings on the chorus, with wistful and nostalgic delivery. Music often hits me the hardest on lonely late night drives home, after an evening out with friends or spent at my girlfriend's house: there's something about playing records at full volume, alone in a car on a dark road that makes them ring with clarity and come alive. The songs on Late Night Drive seem to come directly from that place, and that's something that hit me hard right away. There's a strangely meditative, healing power in drives like that, and that theme cuts through every song on this EP. "Twilight," the following track, comes from a very similar place. It's a mostly piano based number with a killer vocal melody and some of Ivins' most heartbreaking lyrics, born from a relationship at it's end. "Fighting with your present because it won't become your past/Memories are for suckers who couldn't make it last," he croons on the song's bridge, bolstered by some well-placed back-up vocals. The sparse acoustic atmosphere works very well for most of these songs, and "Twilight" is terrific as is, but I feel like there's a better song in there that doesn't quite make it's way out in this arrangement. There's potential for a truly epic, bruising build to that song, a crescendo that's not quite possible with this limited instrumentation and production. It's hard to complain about a song this good, but I would be thrilled to see it done in a bigger fashion.

Ivins saves the best for last with "House of Three," a viscerally moving number that serves as an ode to his mother, who passed away last year. The EP feels like a progression, like every musical and personal moment Ivins has had across the previous four songs have built to this one piece of perfection. Ivins gives his most emotional performance on the album, understandably, and it comes across in both his vocal performance and in his guitar playing, especially in the cathartic chorus. "I don't want to have my memories/'Cause I don't need reminding that they're all that's left until eternity," he states on the verse, looking back at a lifetime of glorious moments with a person who departed from his life far too soon. He considers driving away and trying to escape it all, but by the end of the song, he seems resigned to the fact that he's lost something that no number of late night drives could ever heal, and that the pain he is feeling will probably never fully wash away. Ivins is a strong singer and a songwriter, and it shows on every track on this album, but this one is simply in another class. It's probably one of the four or five best songs I've heard all year, and it would be a shame for Ivins not to get the recognition he deserves for it.

Late Night Drive is a solid EP from a promising young singer/songwriter that I will most certainly be following from here on out. He writes relatable songs with heart and talent, and performs them with passionate emotional force. Ivins reminds me, in many ways, of some of my favorite artists ever, artists whose music came alive on the late night drives he sings about here, and although he's not going to make his way into their ranks just yet, his ability to evoke those thoughts in me is nothing to laugh about, nor is the fact that this EP closes with one of the most gorgeously perfect songs I've heard in awhile. I can only hope I hear a lot (or at least a few) more of those from him down the road.

"Everything is black and white and grey..."

 The Fray - Scars & Stories

Epic Records, 2012

3.5 stars

Seven years ago (shit, that makes me feel old), The Fray burst into the mainstream music scene with How to Save a Life, an album that spawned a slew of popular radio singles and pretty much immediately made them the posters boys for the type of melodic piano pop that served as the soundtrack for shows like Grey's Anatomy. That association was a blessing a curse for the band, as it pretty much immediately skyrocketed them to stardom but also caused a lot of people to write them off early on. I thought How to Save a Life was a solid record, not a great one: I loved all the singles ("Over My Head," "How to Save a Life," "Look After You," "All At Once"), and a few of the album tracks ("Vienna," especially), but overall, it was a record I felt I outgrew quite early, and judging by the fact that the band's album sales have been dropping with each release, I probably wasn't the only one.

Despite this, The Fray have quietly become one of the most dependable bands in mainstream pop-rock, releasing a self-titled record three years ago that not only had one of the best lead-off singles of that year ("You Found Me"), but also a slew of terrific tracks, especially the closer, "Happiness," which has since become a favorite song of mine. With their third (and arguably best) release to date, The Fray make no attempt to reinvent the wheel, but they come up with their best set of songs to date and with an album that feels decidedly more mature and unified, both in sound and theme. The album's biggest triumph comes in the form of "Munich," a sweeping display of power balladry with a immense chorus. The song contains elements of many of their previous songs, but also adopts a wider array of influences (with U2's presence being the most palpable), and producer Brendan O'Brien makes it sound as huge as it should. I never felt like O'Brien was the right fit when he worked with Springsteen, but he may just be the perfect match for The Fray, as he brings a more definitive rock edge in their sound and makes the band sound bigger, better, and more muscular than they ever have on record. Look no further than first single and album opener "Heartbeat," a driving rocker which sports one of the best hooks I've heard all year, or "The Fighter," where the album's increased emphasis on guitars is perhaps the most evident.

"Run For Your Life" is yet another killer single from a band with a history of them, while "The Wind" juxtaposes beautiful verse melodies, distant backing vocals, and a truly gorgeous falsetto release. I've always liked frontman Isaac Slade's voice, but he sounds better than ever on this record and especially on this song, making it one of the absolute best moments of the record. Similarly breathtaking is "I Can Barely Stay," the album's obvious centerpiece ballad and the song most destined to become a soundtrack staple. O'Brien outfits the tune with an army of strings that are massively appealing, but I almost wish he'd just left the it alone, since I'm certain it would function just as well in a stripped down format, just Slade on piano and vocals. That's only a matter of preference though, and the strings give the song an undeniably yearning and epic feel. Guitarist Joe King takes over vocals on "Rainy Zurich," and much like "Ungodly Hour," the song he sang on the previous album, it's a highlight, with a pleasant downpour of pianos and guitar accents forming an evocative background.

In between the ballads and ready-made radio songs, The Fray experiment a bit with more tempo driven, guitar reliant rock songs, and although the results are somewhat mixed and these songs don't end up being the best moments of the album, they do give it a nicely paced flow. How to Save a Life had great singles, but suffered from a drop-off of quality between those and the album tracks, which were basically just less interesting versions of the hits. Luckily, that's not the case here: "Here We Are" wouldn't have been out of place on the last Switchfoot record, while "48 to Go" is almost begging to become a road trip rocker, and "Turn Me On" is good on record, but sounds like it would be absolute dynamite in a live show, with a chorus ready to be shouted by a venue full of fans. Meanwhile "1961" felt relatively unremarkable until I listened to the lyrics, which tell the story of two brothers who find themselves on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall, unable to reach each other. "But it won't be the same again," Slade sings on the song's refrain, his voice breaking into a lilting falsetto in such a heartbreaking manner that the song worked its way into my brain more and more with each listen. The record closes with "Be Still," a lullaby of a piano ballad that is carried forth by a keyboard that delays and echoes through an empty space, joined only by ambient strings, to haunting effect. As it should, the focus stays with Slade's voice until the end, and even though it isn't quite the closer "Happiness" was, it ends the album with a stark sense of finality.

Scars & Stories came together during an extensive period of traveling that the band took prior to re-entering the studio. They wrote over 70 songs for the project, and the record represents the very best of them, songs that only depart slightly from the band's established musical style, but songs that are informed by world issues and experiences. As a result, this material feels distinctly weightier and more mature than previous efforts, and the songs feel more like they are part of a single journey or arc. As the album's throwback artwork implies, The Fray set out not to make a collection of singles, but a full album, and the accomplishment of that goal is rather easily their best record to date. Landing somewhere between the piano pop of Jack's Mannequin and the increasingly classic rock driven sound of Augustana, Scars & Stories is the sound of a band that is growing and improving with each record, and I think someday, they're going to make something that's really great. With this record and the last one under their belts, they're well on their way.

"Life was just happening..."

Switchfoot - Vice Verses

lowercase people records, 2011

Four stars

It's a funny thing: I never think of Switchfoot as one of my favorite bands, and I never anticipate their new releases with the excitement that I await so many of my favorite albums every year, and yet, they're undeniably one of the four or five bands that really got me into music in the first place, and every single record they put out is still getting played by me years later. I bought The Beautiful Letdown at K-Mart on an impulse buy based on how much I liked "Meant to Live" and especially "Dare You To Move" (still one of my favorite radio singles of the 00s). It was probably the 6th or 7th album in my collection, and quickly became one of my favorites. It had the singles, some great mid-tempo rockers ("This Is Your Life," "Gone"), some chilled out jams, destined for my summer soundtrack ("The Beautiful Letdown") and a pair of ballads that I played over and over again ("On Fire" and "Twenty Four"). Throughout my musically formative months that made up the fall of 2004, I discovered a handful of new artists and albums that are still among my favorites today, but The Beautiful Letdown held over from that summer, continuing to make a strong impression on me every single time I listened.

When the band dropped the follow-up, Nothing is Sound, in the fall of 2006, it became for that season what The Beautiful Letdown was two years earlier. I still consider that record to be their best: a terrific collection of songs from start to finish, free of a single misstep, and full of the kind of catchy mid-tempo rock and heartfelt balladry that the band had carved out for themselves on it's predecessor. The next record, entitled Oh! Gravity, never hit me the way the previous two had, and caused the band to fall off my radar until lead singer Jon Foreman released a terrific set of acoustic EPs (one for each season) in 2007 and 2008. Looking back, Oh! Gravity is as classic a Switchfoot record as either of the others, albeit a little less accessible on initial listen. Their 2009 release, Hello Hurricane, dropped halfway through my first semester of college, and reminded me why I loved this band in the first place: their sound was comfortable, like an old friend, their songs were almost always something I could relate to, and the hooks were often irresistible.

The problem I had with Hello Hurricane, which kept it from being near the top of my end of the year list, was that it had flow and consistency issues. The band seemed to have developed a desire to write more aggressive rockers, and those parts of the album ("The Sound," "Mess of Me" and "Bullet Soul"), ended up boring me a bit, and felt a bit jarring next to the gentler material. It was a shame too, since that album had possibly the best track in the band's discography to that point: the anthemic, U2-esque opener, "Needle In Haystack Life," which was easily one of the five best songs of that year.

Two years later, Switchfoot is back with Vice Verses, which they've made pretty clear is supposed to be "the best thing they've ever done." While I'm not sure it takes that title, it's still their most consistent effort since Nothing is Sound, and, true to Switchfoot form, has some truly terrific standout tracks. The band's desire to rock a little harder hasn't waned since Hurricane, as it opens with three of the loudest songs here, with crunchy guitars and distortion galore. This time around though, they don't sound boring or out of place. The riffs are bigger, the hooks better, and Jon Foreman sounds as terrific as ever. Of this opening trio ("Afterlife," "The Original." and "The War Inside"), "The Original" hits the hardest. offering the biggest, most infectious riff on the entire record. "Restless" is the kind of mid-tempo ballad that made me fall in love with this band at the first place, and is a contender of the title of best track on the album. "Blinding Light" has an explosive chorus that is one of the album's biggest, while "Selling the News" is notable for it's politically charged lyrics and Jon Foreman's vocals, which are spoken word on the verses and sung on the chorus. 

Jon Foreman laments a life that has lost it's spark on "Thrive," a mid-tempo ballad that opens sounding like something from U2's most recent record, but builds to a chorus and an emotional bridge that would have been right at home on Hello Hurricane. "Dark Horses," the first single, is this album's "Meant to Live," a big rock song with a big riff, while album highlight "Souvenirs" is the "Dare You to Move," a big earnest piece of pop-rock with soaring vocals and guitar accents that recalls the best moments of each Switchfoot record: "Needle" off Hurricane, "Awakening" from Gravity, "Golden" off Nothing is Sound, and the aforementioned anthem from Letdown (which was also on that album's predecessor, Learning to Breathe). By the time the record reached that song on my first play through, I was in love. As with every Switchfoot album (with the exception of Sound) there are a few moments here that aren't as strong as others, but Jon Foreman's ability to churn out at least one or two legitimately perfect pop-rock songs every time out (along with a slew of consistently good material) has made them a band that I return to time and time again, and a band that I think probably does rank among my favorites. By the end of "Souvenirs," I was also thinking about how Switchfoot is a band I've followed longer than most, whose music has been a big part of my life from the summer before 8th grade all the way to my freshman year of college, and finally to now.

Vice Verses closes with a true one-two punch. First is the title track, a gorgeous song, featuring some of the best lyrics on the album, and a beautiful vocal from Foreman. The production is also notable, using an "echo" effect as the song goes on to give the feeling that it is getting further and further away. It almost feels like a closer, in the same vein of "Red Eyes," "Daisy" or "Twenty-Four" from past albums, but "Where I Belong" takes things out instead, and it does so in epic fashion. Marked by a choir of "woah-oh" backing vocals, the song has the same anthemic crescendo that marks a lot of the band's best material, and it builds into the finest album closer this band has put to record. It's the kind of closer that bands use to end live sets years after the fact, the kind of song that can fill clubs, auditoriums, or stadiums, and it hits just the way it's supposed to: it makes you want to turn up the volume."I still believe we can live forever," Jon Foreman sings, at the chilling peak of the song's swell; I'm not so sure he's right, but a song like this might just be able to.