CD Review
Everclear
Black Is The New Black
The End Records
2015
Review: Joseph Suto
✰✰✰
Everclear is back with a brand new release entitled Black Is The New Black. It marks the band’s first release in three years and is also the first album other than their debut not to hit the Billboard 200. Despite the poor showing sales wise, the album is far from an embarrassment. Clocking in at forty minutes the band takes the listener through what Everclear fans have come to expect from Art Alexakis over the years.
The album kicks off with “Sugar Noise”, a fine way to get the album kicked off. It is closely followed by “The Man Who Broke His Own Heart” a song the band has been featuring in concert recently.
Most of the songs clock in under four minutes except for the lengthier closer “Safe” which is one of the highlights. The lineup is the same that recorded 2012s Invisible Stars.
While there isn’t any new ground broken on Black Is The New Black, it does remain a steady album and is perhaps the band’s best album since 2000s Songs From An American Movie Vol. One. Compared to most of the band’s recent releases, this album hits hard and fast from the start. Don’t expect to hear any ballads. What you will get is hard aggressive rock, with heavy guitar just the way Alexakis wanted it to be. When doing press for the record he stated “I will be 98 years old and pissing off my great grandkids,” he predicts, with a hearty laugh. “’Grandpa is playing that horrible, loud music again!”. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
Track Listing
01. Sugar Noise
02. The Man Who Broke His Own Heart
03. American Monster
04. Complacent
05. You
06. This Is Your Death Song
07. Simple And Plain
08. Anything Is Better Than This
09. Van Gogh Sun
10. Pretty Bomb
11. Safe
