London in Brooklyn

The rain keeps coming, and thanks to Electricity Bill's Premiership "Preview", everything feels a little more English around here. Now for something emphatically not English...

Lower Forty-Eight - Apertures
Monotreme Records
17 October 2006
3 stars

I'm assuming there are plenty of Avail fans reading this (and you can count me among them), but I'm wondering how many of you really appreciate their work since they jumped to Fat Wreck. It was about that time that the material began to sound overproduced, their original passion seemed to dissipate and Tim Barry's vocals just went somewhere else. I have no idea where they went really, all I know is that there are few new-millenium Avail songs that really hit me. Well, Lower Forty-Eight vocalist Andrew Lund sounds exactly like what Tim Barry sounds like now.

San Francisco's Lower Forty-Eight lays out a tight mixture of mid-90s post-hardcore and early- to mid-90s skatecore. They display mature songwriting with complex guitar and bass lines supported by very solid drumming. While this band retains a certain level of technicality, it is never reaches the point of being unnecessary; it's generally mid-tempo music that remains interesting and listenable. Unfortunately, for all these positives, the vocals ruin the album.

I'm not sure what else to say. I really miss my old Avail. I really wish this band Lower Forty-Eight would rethink their vocal styling because otherwise they're so damn good. This is all a bit depressing especially since it won't stop raining.