Fang Island kicks off their self-titled full-length debut with both literal and figurative fireworks, and by the end of it they sound like they’re headed toward some kind of rock n’ roll promised land. The big problem is the journey in the middle- I just couldn’t find enough musical or emotional hooks along the way to get very attached to it.
I wanted to love this album. The band seems like they’ve absorbed valuable lessons from a couple of my favorite records (Andrew W.K.’s I Get Wet, Green Day’s American Idiot), particularly the art of mixing punk, prog and stadium rawk with Pentecostal fervor. Apparently, though, Fang Island simply didn’t care to learn much about the songwriting fundamentals that make those other two records so great.
Of course, not every album needs to know how to write potential hit singles to succeed, especially if it doesn’t necessarily want to be some other band’s album. In the end, Fang Island just wants to be Fang Island. I can dig that, and I’m glad this band exists. But even so, Fang Island practically cries out for more structure and the consistent presence of a lead singer. The more I listened, the less I heard it as a fun mostly-instrumental record with occasional outbursts of singing, and the more I heard a record that could have been great if someone hadn’t accidentally deleted the lead vocal tracks.
The band certainly has chops. Once in a while, they’ll whip out a killer riff or a high-wire transition that really shakes my blood, but those moments are dwarfed by the melody-starved spaces in between. Even the roller-coaster dynamics become less enjoyable as the album goes on, as the rises and falls grow increasingly predictable. If you were to graph the intensity levels of Fang Island over its running time, it would probably resemble a string of uniform upper-case Ms.
To Fang Island’s benefit, songwriting is a craft that a young band can hone, and the enthusiasm which they already possess in spades is something that can’t be taught. I may not have fallen for their debut, but I’ll keep an ear out for what they’ll do next. If they ever try to write their own “Carry On Wayward Son,” it’ll be downright dynamite.