Fittingly, Rogue Wave begins their album by asking, “Will I follow you down the line?” It’s the question I asked as the album continued the trek toward desperate. As a Rogue Wave fan, I’ve ignored transgressions in the past: shoddy lyrics, strange effects, cheese, and dialectical oddities, but nothing like Permalight. This album asks too much with its opening question and seemingly knows it has.
That isn’t to say the entire album is bad. Rather the opposite, I refuse to apologize for liking slow number “Sleepwalker” despite it’s ridiculous, plot-based lyrics. “Fear Itself” is a good mid-tempo jam with awesome hooks. “We Will Make a Song Destroy” accentuates the bands strengths while going a step beyond their normal rockers. Even “You Have Boarded” and “Right With You” are pretty good despite being annoying. Hell, I like nearly half the album. Problem is, I can’t say I love any of it. And what I don’t like? It’s too critically awful to ignore.
The genuine spirit and soul that made the band one of my guilty pleasures has dissipated after some tough times. I won’t go into those problems here, since it would probably be kind of patronizing for the dude trashing their record saying they have an excuse. Instead, I’ll cut everything a little short and say that Permalight feels more like a band trying to hang on to status than it does a band experimenting with their sound. Songs like “Good Morning,” “Stars and Stripes,” and “Solitary Gun” venture haphazardly into the fracas of popular drivel and decimate the forward-moving idea of a band through their tragedies.
I will say this: through it all, they can still write catchy, likable songs. “I’ll Never Leave You” sheds the ulterior motives and combines their penchant for poppy folk mixed with an ability to use delicately simple lyrics. “Your pain is my pain./ We’ll go out of this just the same./ We’re better when our paths combine./ I nearly drove past the sign.” It’s simple, in the moment and worth it to know that everyone is still trying to get out alive. I just wish the music had survived their pitfalls unscathed too.