These Times

Two attempts for the sake of one album

The American band Safetysuit from the glorious city of Nashville first pleased the audience greatly with the excellent debut effort called Life Left To Go (2008), and then was close to driving them mad with the delayed release of the following record. The much anticipated CD surfaced as late as in 2012. Could it be so that a group of such talented and ambitious musicians required so much time to craft only eleven songs for slightly over forty minutes? The truth is that in the beginning the ensemble was planning to deliver the album a lot earlier. However, when the whole bulk of the material was ready and nothing but the recording was left to do, the guys suddenly decided this was not what they wanted and agreed to do everything all over again. They even hired new producers. Well, now the members of Safetysuit assure their new studio work, These Times, is exactly what they wanted to see ad hear, and that they have no doubt the listeners will also like it.

Pop-rock with the best it can offer

A short album like These Times gives no space, nor time to deviate from the core and conduct experiments. The whole track-listing of the given CD provides a collection of top-notch pop rock with catchy choruses and fascinating guitar parts. Once you hear the first sounds of the album-opening Believe, you would want the entire record to be like this song, and this wish is made true. The opener is followed by the two most vivid candidates to the album’s highlights, Get Around This, and Let Go. Both apply the same tricks: simple lyrics about complex relationships, and killer chorus which you would want to replay in rounds. Ultimately different in nature, yet the same in effect is the title song These Times. You will be enchanted with soft acoustic guitar and exceptional vocals from Doug Brown who, despite all expectations, abandoned love-related topics and sung about the global fall of moral values in our days. In the second half of the album, Safetysuit prove that they are capable of playing good stuff regardless of tempo. First, they come up with speedy and heavier material, Crash, and Never Stop, and at the end of These Times you find a wonderful ballad named Life In The Pain.

Safetysuit are mightily able

These Times can in no way be called a unique album, and you can not find one in the present pop rock, but this does make the record less appealing. One can even forgive Safetysuit all the banalities and silliness in the lyrics, which the pickiest listeners may find in each song here. The American musicians do not claim to be what they really are not and do not want to be. They are not poets, prophets or philosophers. They set a goal to make a record without a single boring or gray song, and they did it. These Times has a track list so consistent that any of its songs could be a radio favorite. And it takes a truly skilled musician and particular song-writing principles to make an album follow one stylistic line and to make it interesting from start to end. With as few as two albums in their discography, Safetysuit can already now think of themselves as a performer that is able of completing most serious tasks.