Good Old War - Broken Into Better Shape

Good Old War
Broken Into Better Shape
2015

Indie Pop can be quite the delicate little balance. On one hand you are appealing to the biggest audience possible, making music for the masses but on the other you don't want to loose whatever Indie cred you have developed with the hipsters of the world. It's making music catchy enough to sing along in your car, but poignant enough to really "matter". Broken Into Better Shape seems to prefer the former rather than the latter. Good Old War have really let the sugar pop loose on this record, using their pristine harmonies to craft hook filled after hook filled song. They are unrelenting on this album which is light, bright and catchy from start to finish. However unlike most records in this vein there is never a sense of contrivance, this music is not a plan but more of a happy accident. The guitars are always clean, the drums always bright everything on this album is polished to a point of almost off putting sweetness, and somehow in a good way. It is a strange sensation listening to something so clawingly sweet but actually being OK with it.

Walk The Moon, Nate Ruess and Others have blazed the trail in the Indie Pop genre that actually gets major radio play. It seems that Good Old War are following that suit, but in some ways they may have gone to far. There is no sense of edge to this record, there are almost no stakes. While the album is catchy and perfectly fine in almost every respect the music is missing something, and element that really elevates it to another level. For Walk the Moon it was pace and actually rock, but that is completely absent here. The album takes a slower pace towards the end, but it really doesn't seem to serve the music, instead it just delays the inevitable conclusion that this may just be another candy coated pop album. It is to bad because you can feel that there is something more in Good Old War, it is just not on Broken Into Better Shape.

5.4 out of 10