ALBUM REVIEW: Everything is A-Ok – Violent Soho
VIOLENT SOHO are back with their fifth album, having fought an onslaught of personal and professional demons along the way. Now, though, Everything Is A-OK.
“It’s honest,” explains guitarist/vocalist Luke Boerdam. “It doesn’t claim to be anything it’s not: it’s apolitical, slacker, cynical and trying to connect with people over a shared experience in pointing out society’s failures and the personal shit that follows.” Everything is A-OK is an album which reflects on 18 years of being together in a band with exactly the same members; no small feat in itself.
The record kicks off with Sleep Year, but it’s lead single Vacation Forever which first begins to turn heads, a song about stifling suburbia and getting lost in the monotony of life. It’s more relentless and confident in its intentions than the album opener and makes use of a nostalgic chord progression which packs a punch at the same time as being really gentle and actually quite beautiful. It also includes the brilliant lyric, “There’s a baby boomer across the street / And it won’t stop staring at me.”
Slow Down Sonic is another album standout, with the pace slowed down in an otherwise infectiously energetic record. This song provides a welcome change in tempo, with the best guitar tone on the album. The lyrics straddle the boundary between cynical and funny, melancholic yet still upbeat. An understated yet perfectly executed anthem. Lying on the Floor is a brutally relatable song about the times when life gets too much, and it is here again that this band is shown to be at their best.
The vocals get a bit tiresome at times, with some actually very weak sounding points during album opener Sleep Year and Canada (otherwise a really brilliant song) whenever Boerdam is required to sing across the break. There are other low points on the album such as Pick It Up Again which seems to lack imagination and Sleep Year which also seems very poorly placed in the album order.
Overall, however, this band is grungy with an edge and grittiness which really sets them apart from the rest of the sprawling alt-rock scene. VIOLENT SOHO provides an album with a singular vision – to play the music that they love. At the core of it all, they’re just mates playing music together and writing songs about their lives. This record is laidback, lighthearted and well-worth a listen.
Producer Greg Wales says that the band “care a lot about the expression and tone of their work. There is a hell of a lot of musical intelligence running under the hood of this beast.” This album really reflects that – whilst more laidback in approach and simplistic to the casual ear, upon further reflection this is a well-crafted record which is greater than the sum of its parts. Although the parts are also mostly pretty great.
Rating: 7/10
Everything is A-Ok is out now via Pure Noise Records.
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