Album Review: Anberlin - Dark Is the Way, Light Is a Place

If there is one thing guaranteed when listening to an Anberlin album, it is that they will have a cracking opening track. "Readyfuels", "Never Take Friendship Personal", "Godspeed", "The Resistance", and now – “We Owe It To Ourselves” can be added to the canon. Anberlin’s fifth full-length, “Dark is the Way, Light is the Place”, cracks off at a rapid pace with another sure-fire fan-favourite – a chunky distorted riff and an instantly memorable chorus showcase Anberlin at their very best. This is a song that would have fit in perfectly on "Cities" or "NTFP", yet still counts as progress for the band. Stephen Christian’s vocals are allowed to soar in the mix, again highlighting him as one of the best vocalists in rock music – though the breakdown feels slightly too meandering and feels like it loses its way a bit.

Anberlin have always been somewhere on the slider of pop-rock, with Cities perhaps being their rockiest effort and their first album the closest to pop. It seems that Anberlin are growing more and more comfortable with being seen as a pop band, and the Jimmy Eat World–esque “Impossible” is a perfect example of this. After the runaway radio success of “The Feel Good Drag” from 2008’s "New Surrender", it seems Anberlin have become preoccupied with trying to get the perfect radio sheen on their songs. It is to the detriment of the album which seems to plod along at time, with the similar tempo songs all blending into one another, with little to distinguish them from one another.

This is not to say that Anberlin have crafted a bad album, they haven’t yet done that in five attempts, but this is the weakest output since their debut, "Blueprints for Blackmarkets", and marks the smallest progress taken by the band. In fact, despite being a great song, “We Owe This to Ourselves”, acts as something of a red-herring, and is atypical of the rest of the album.

“You Belong Here” is a decent song with a chorus with a hook bigger than the eponymous Captain, and, like so many other songs on the album, could see Anberlin garner even more radio play. Perhaps tellingly though, the song that brought them their success “The Feel Good Drag” was one of the weakest tracks on "NTFP" and the reworked version of it was only marginally better. It would struggle to make my list of top 20 Anberlin songs, and it is an indication that success and writing great songs may not be as intertwined as musical romantics would like to believe.

I need to make it clear that I am no begrudging Anberlin success whatsoever. I have bought all their albums, seen them live multiple times and always enjoyed their music, but perhaps with the added expectations thrust upon them after their record breaking foray into the Billboard charts, they have been to intently focused on delivering the next “hit”. It is because of this that Anberlin, for the first time in their careers, have released an album that is not a coherent piece of music but a collection of individual songs. “To the Wolves” to me encapsulates this point, a song that is clearly a “good” song, but ruined by over-production and lacking the rock ‘edge’ that has typified Anberlin’s earlier output.

Perhaps on “Dark is the Place, Light is the Way”, Anberlin have pushed the slider too far towards the pop side of pop-rock, and the end result is a good album for sure, but it doesn’t stack up against what they have produced before. It is lacking in invention, and in no way marks a step-forward in the bands progress. It’s not a step backwards, but rather no step at all. This is “rock” music you would be happy to let your Nan know you listen to, and that isn’t what great rock music should be about. Expect to hear one of these songs on your radio soon – but don’t expect this album to be hogging your CD player for too long.

2.5/5

'Dark Is the Way, Light Is a Place' by Anberlin is available now in the US on Universal Republic and is released in the UK on November 15th through Defacto/Island Records.

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Nick Robbins