Album Review: My Heart To Joy - Seasons In Verse

Unless a similarity jumps out at me straight away, I’m pretty terrible at saying what or who bands sound like, so I headed to this bands myspace page to have a peak at their ’sounds like’ section - I found out that a band member’s old band once played with ‘Flock Of Seagulls,’ interesting fact, but does not help in my quest for a comparison.

Basically, they sound a bit like Algernon Cadwallader, but not as spazzy/jangly, and quite a bit heavier, kind of more upbeat and faster in places, with singing that sounds a little like it belongs in a post hardcore/emo band. Like I say, I’m not the best with coming up with comparisons, either way, it is BRILLIANT!

The album starts with ‘Time Spent Breathing’ which is an instrumental that starts of really slow , gradually building up into an epic crescendo, this carries on into track number two of the album ‘Empty Homes.’ This track is pretty different to the rest of the album, and I don’t think would sound too out of place on ‘Artist in the Ambulance’ era Thrice.

Next comes ‘Seasons in Verse’ which is more akin to the album as a whole, and fits in better with the comparison at the beginning of the review, it’s upbeat, and it’s different to most things around at the moment, basically it’s fantastic. The album pretty much continues in similar fashion, with all of the songs sounding really tight, and pretty much spot on, there’s just the right mixture of everything, the songs are technical but not too technical that you get bored easily, but enough to set them aside from other bands they could be categorised with.

A highlight of the album come with track four ‘All of Life is Coming Home’ which starts like mot other songs on the album, before building up to an impressive display of drumming about midway through which then leads way to some impressive gang vocals. To be fair though, the full album is great, and any song could be considered a highlight, it’s the type of album where you could get a new favourite every couple of listens. Despite a lot of the album sounding really similar, each song has its own individual moments of brilliance that can set it aside from the others, and it’s this trait that reminds me most of Algernon Cadwallader.

Overall, this is a band that show a lot of promise and a lot of potential, they will appeal to a lot of people, and will appeal to fans of many genres. However, I don’t think they quite have what it takes yet to appeal to the mainstream, but then again I don’t think that is top of the bands priorities. If the band continues to make music of this quality, and they get a bit more exposure, I imagine a new ‘sounds like’ section may not be too far on the horizon.

For more info on My Heart To Joy go to: http://www.myspace.com/myhearttojoy

Daniel Ferguson