ATP! Album Review: Boys Like Girls - Crazy World

Earlier this year, Boys Like Girls made a rather triumphant return to the music world with their "Crazy World" EP, so it only stands to reason that the full-length album boasting the same name would live up to the three songs that we’d already been handed. Unfortunately for listeners, it doesn’t.

What made the EP so good was that though all three songs rang with a true Boys Like Girls feel, they were three different songs-- the emotional ballad, the country-tinged party song and the radio friendly pop track. It left listeners with a promise of an album that would share the same sentiments, giving us pure BLG goodness in 11 tracks that rocked their own sound. Maybe that was wishful thinking, but "Crazy World" ended up falling flat and far from the greatness that this reviewer had hoped for upon giving the EP a spin.

Opening with 'The First Time' and 'Life of the Party', both from the EP, the album descends into one big blur of a song. At one point, I was almost certain I had been listening to the same song for 15 minutes, but it turned out that I had just been listening to 15 minutes worth of music that literally had no distinction between the songs. Now this may not be a terrible thing given you enjoy the flat line of sound the band serves. Admittedly there have been worse releases and at least it sounds like a rather long good song. Not a great one, but a decent one. But that’s it. That’s all there is to take away from "Crazy World". One long, decent track that if you aren’t careful, will lull you into sleep.

Again, this album could have been so much better had it just followed in the footsteps of the EP before it, but it didn’t and somehow got lost with the eight tracks that were added. In the end, "Crazy World" would have been best left as the three track EP because too be honest, in this case, less would have been so much more.

2/5

Victoria Patneaude

"Crazy World" available now via Columbia Records.