Album Review: Roslyn - On Display

Roslyn are made up of ex-members of River City High and hail from Richmond, VA. The band emerged in mid 2008 influenced by a number of bands including The Beatles and Jimmy Eat World. Roslyn claim to be stepping out with a fresh sound, taking mediocrity out of your standard pop-rock song.

After such a bold statement I press play eager to hear what I’m going to get with opening song ‘Suicide Girl’, unfortunately I get a mediocre standard pop rock song! It almost reminds me of a poor man’s Lit. The song is by no means bad with a decent melody and nice vocals by singer Brooks, backed up by some nice guitar work.

2nd track ‘On Display’ basically continues where ‘Suicide Girl’ left off, only seeing the band move into a much poppier direction. This is proper radio friendly inoffensive pop rock that could even have the potential to be a nice little summer hit for the band if it gets into the right hands.

3rd song ‘All this Time’ is an acoustic driven affair which shows a bit of promise until the chorus kicks in with an almost awkward melody which seems really forced as they sing ‘let go’ over and over again, the lyrics in this song are really horrible and I really struggle to not press skip!

Closing track, ‘Personal Ghost’ is thankfully a much stronger track. It’s a slow burning song which builds and builds with some great emotion driven vocal lines thrown in for good measure, the only complaint is that it doesn’t really go anywhere, it leaves you wondering when the big finish is going to kick in but sadly it doesn’t come.

I think with a few tweaks here and there Roslyn could become a good band and they defiantly have an eye for a radio friendly song of two, meaning that we might well hear more from them once their album drops later this year. Having said that, on this display I wouldn’t be at all shocked if it has one or two hits surrounded by a lot of filler!

2/5

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Matt Buck