Labels: Arena Rock
Review by: Damien Mills
For those that don’t know and didn’t bother to read Andy’s recent review of their 7″, Frontier(s) is the current project of former Elliott/Falling Forward frontman Chris Higdon, and for those familiar with those bands, particularly the former, there will be no real surprises here. Basically what you have is a much more rocking version of later Elliott, it has that super clear, crisp production but tied to a much more thumping (but also more varied) collection of material. If you are curious but unfamiliar with Elliott (imagine that) I guess the most direct alternative description I can manage is to say it’s a sort of U2 influenced melodic-post-hardcore-indie with some very nice warm, soaring vocals, the sort of stuff that was popular once but rarely seems even attempted these days… and yes, I am painfully aware both ‘indie’ and ‘post hardcore’ are pretty much meaningless terms in 2010, but I’m just getting back into this reviewing game, so nuts to you.
Overall I do still quite like this sort of thing, and this is as good an example of it as you’ll find these days I reckon, if I have a criticism it’s that the cd I have of this jumps about all over the place during the second half of the album for no reason that I can see, manufacturing fault? It’s very annoying anyway. You’ve potentially been warned. (A member of the band has since sorted Damien out with a working copy – cool! ED)