You Blew It! - Keep Doing What You're Doing (Album Review)
Friday, 17 January 2014
Written by Huw Baines
There’s really only one way to go about creating a ‘revival’: carry on regardless while the mainstream forgets what you’re doing, and then give it a couple of years.
You Blew It! make handy poster boys for the ‘emo revival’ that’s been trumpeted of late, given their Cap’n Jazz meets Get Up Kids sound, but the Orlando natives have in fact been kicking around for almost half a decade, releasing their debut full-length - the spare, indie-infused ‘Grow Up, Dude’ - in 2012 and going through band members at quite a clip.
‘Keep Doing What You’re Doing’ follows in the wake of an excellent split release with Fake Problems, on which the seeds of their slight reinvention were apparent. The guitars here are far less likely to stand on the edge of a conversation and, from the opening chug of Match & Tinder, provide the impetus for Tanner Jones to up the ante.
His vocals are largely yelled, cracking over lyrics that appear nebulous before revealing a few killer payoff lines that will have stereotypes hugging their backpacks with joy (see Award Of The Year Award’s “You can always consider me a friend, just strictly in the past tense”).
Produced by Evan Weiss of Into It. Over It., who also contributes bass, ‘Keep Doing What You’re Doing’ benefits from its anthemic moments having a little more back up, while its quieter sections - even on a small scale, like the subtle second guitar line in the opening bars of Award… - also have more room to work.
The album’s closing statement, Better To Best, is the ‘biggest’ thing You Blew It! have ever put out, a bracing mix of distorted guitars, gang ‘woah-ohs’ and plaintive lyricism. It suits them. There are still a few too many soundalike moments around this record’s belly, but it’s a pretty safe bet that they are going to be worked off in the next couple of years. There’s much, much more to come from this band.
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