Ok … I’ll admit I’m a sucker for a catchy pop tune. Throw a little Stacy’s Mom, or Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend on and you’ll see me rocking harder than this guy (minus the pizza haha).
Well a little over a year ago I heard one of the coolest songs that I had heard in a long while on WBRU… yea the actual radio! Who would have thought? It was kind of chiptune, but had a lot more guitars….annnnd I loved it! It had just about everything that a polished power pop song should have, a short and sweet intro, a catchy chorus about a minute in, a sweet solo, and enough I’s, IV’s and V’s that would literally make Beethoven roll over in his grave! I was instantly hooked, the song ended and they went to a commercial…who was this band that had me doing the DiGiorno dance in my car? Well it turns out that I couldn’t catch the tune with my phone’s song identifier, and the ADD in me kicked in and I totally forget what the damn song was….
…until one random day I was browsing through Rhapsody and it happened. It was as if the rock gods themselves had come down and handed me the Mouse of Destiny and guided me to it, because right there on my screen as a recommended artist was none other than I Fight Dragons.
So I see their latest album (Kaboom!) and in addition to the album title being a video game reference, the album art was as well, and the first song is a 30 second was a slower more chiptuney instrumental called “Fanfare” that seemed kind of reminiscent of the theme from the original Legend of Zelda. (did I mention that I’m a recovering gameaholic… :: pauses :: annnnd I’m only half joking about that one haha).
So there I was, seemingly having found this cool chiptune band to check out. When all of the sudden the chorus of the next and title track came on….which turns out to be a full rock version of the theme of the first song! Ah-mazing! That radio single came on a bunch of tracks later, but hooked on this record way before it came on.
So as I said before, they had the chord progressions, catchy choruses, and sugar coated solos down for some good ole awesome pop amazingness, but Kaboom! brings Much more to the table than that.
Everything from the instrumentation, harmonies, and song titles to the lyrics themselves make this an extremely solid album as a whole. You don’t see that very often anymore. In today’s music landscape, people put the single out, maybe make an EP and hope to digitally get it into the pants of the masses!
Although I’d recommend this album as a whole, if you want some highlights I’d say check out their video for Save World Get Girl (which takes a big cue from the 1995 single Moon by the band Fossil) The video features the band battling space baddies and rescuing the “maidens” in distress using their Nintendo weapons, powerpads, and of course the Konami Code. Turns out that it was actually released in 3D for the Nintendo 3DS.
And although that lead single “The Geeks Will Inherit the Earth” does prove worthy of a great alternative (or even not so alternative) radio single; my favorite song on the album is the epic finale of a track called Suburban Doxology. It is a track that interestingly reminds me of Coheed and Cambria’s “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3″. Although the IFD song starts off with more of a bang , it has got good range of highs and lows, and has that battlefieldesque feel at the end with a buildup from slow soft snare drums and an A Capella high school chorus singing an altered version of Gloria (in excelsis meo) to the whole band backing the rendition in full force. This not only transitions well when the singer starts the main chorus over the top of this, but its melody was featured earlier in the album on a short instrumental track called “Gloria”. It’s just brilliant I tell you!
Well these fine gents have a new album in the works… but my post on that will go into the Music Makers section of this blog as it deals more with the biz side of things.
Thanks for reading… what are some of your new favorites?
On a related side note…these guys are playing the Warped Tour again and as much as they are in my top 1 right now, as close as the show is to me, and as there are actually other bands playing that I’d like to see I just can’t afford to spend the money on tickets right now… so if anyone’s buying I think I could whip up a few t-shirts in return… or something!
Thanks again!
- Kevin