REVIEW: Shades Apart, Eyewitness (Universal)
- Scott Slonaker
After several albums and quite a bit of touring, New Jersey's pop-punk Shades Apart have finally become part of the machine- meaning a major label. Perhaps best-known for their punkified cover of "Tainted Love", the band may have surprised many longtime fans by making the move towards the marketplace, after their emo-tinged 1997 album Seeing Things took a step towards Jawbox and a step away from the Offspring.
Between the move to Universal and association with producer Lou Giordano (Goo Goo Dolls, Live) and mixer Mike Fraser (Metallica, Aerosmith) it is little surprise that Eyewitness is by a wide margin the band's most mainstream effort. And, depending on how you feel about "credible" indie punk bands sounding uncomfortably close to Matchbox 20 at times, this could be good or bad.
One of the best tracks is right up front: "Edge of the Century" has a great ascending central riff and an invigorating "whoooaahhoooowoooahhhwooo-ooo-ooo" thrown in. Unfortunately, for every "Edge", there's a "Time Machine", which could be Tonic or Third Eye Blind. These two songs are very characteristic of the rest of Eyewitness: accessible, propulsive pop-punk cut with solid but unremarkable pop/AOR mush. And guess which side the first single, "Valentine", leans towards? Other memorable touches are here, from the Iron Maiden-ish clean guitar sound on "Sputnik" to the ballad (horrors!) "One Starry Night" (which isn't half-bad, all things considered).
In all fairness, there's nothing bad about this record, but its adopted Everyrock sound is likely to leave it lost in a sea of soundalikes. Eyewitness may very well leave Shades Apart's established fans neither here nor there, and the thirtysomething trio aren't likely to be photogenic or quirky enough for MTV, but in terms of pure songs, several of those contained herein certainly rank with their best.
