Saturday, November 5, 2011

The Getaway Plan - Requiem

Single Move Along is very much commercial emo by numbers. Piano and vocals start just over four minutes of tension and angst that if written in the first half of last decade would have been good to very good.


"They've been carving your name out in stone" swoons frontman Matthew Wright at the opening of a song that has been written by better writers 6783 times before. The addition of backing strings do nothing to prove me wrong about the Melbourne lads. It's not that I don't want to like such easy to like music but, in 2011, it feels lazy, fraudulent and, well, boring.


Take a listen to the seventh track, S.T.A.R, and you will understand the relatively benign talents of a band that has played with the reasonable My Chemical Romance and The Used. Don't get me too wrong, Requiem shows The Getaway Plan understand what they're doing by coming back after essentially a three year hiatus, what it doesn't show is how good emo was when at its height.