Get Your Heart On!

Despite the rules of the genre

By the rules of the genre, the Canadians Simple Plan should have collapsed long ago, because the genre they are working in bears the name which makes many music aestheticians, experts and pseudo specialists sick, and that is pop-punk. As the stories of many performers show us, this is the case when you release a couple of impressive albums with two or three hits on each of them, active touring while these songs are everywhere in the airplay, and then… oblivion. Actually, easily memorized choruses, simple combination of riffs and one decent tune for the entire song produce a strong, but short-lived effect, and then you have to offer something else, but you have nothing else to give. Well, Simple Plan are those who crush down these stereotypes as for more than ten years they have remained one of the most successful pop-rockers from Canada. For all the simplicity of their melodies and easiness of their songs, they are catchy. This attractiveness at a glance, or rather at a listen, earned them the ‘pop’ part to their music. In fact, pop-rock, as it is, is presented on Simple Plan fifth long player, Get Your Heart On. There are not so many surprises, and this might be the record’s main advantage.

Without surprises, but with good tracks

What surprise are we talking about in pop-punk? The track-list of the new Simple Plan album repeatedly carries the listener to the band’s first records, a break-neck guitar rush, loud and crazy, and at times brings him to its predecessor, a more mature and serious work, Simple Plan (2008). How come? Well, it could be the band understands it is time to move to a next level, but it is so painful to leave the music of the beginning. Take, for example, the opening You Suck At Love. The musicians do their best to turn it into a true pop-hit, and they, actually, succeed due to a top class chorus, borrowed from pop style, and guitars, left from punk. The same impression is produced by Jet Lag. These songs are a reflection of what Simple Plan are headed for. They do not have so much punk-rock as pop-rock. Then, when you hear the audacious and dirty Loser Of The Year, as if grabbed from the Simple Plan ten-year old catalogue, you come to realization that there, in fact, are tendencies in the ensemble’s development. Another proof to Simple Plan’s great desire to get out of the dragged out youth into maturity and seriousness are ballads, such as Astronaut, and This Song Save My Life. It is nice to feel that they are not just to fill space on the CD, but serve as a integral part, a message the musicians could not but unfold.

Simple Plan grow up slowly to die late?

After each successful album, skeptics predict a soon end to Simple Plan because this is not going to work out next time, but another two or three years later they have to take their words back. It could be magic. Album number five from the Canadian punks, Get Your Heart On, predictably walks the trail trodden by the earlier records, and again we have nothing to blame the band for. However, if you take a look at the whole music journey made by Simple Plan, it gets clear that they are not standing, but actually moving forward towards the set goals. Right, there is no much difference between Simple Plan, and Get Your Heart On, but the latter has not so many similar features with the band’s first record. The instruments are the same, but used more wisely and wider. The vocal is the same, but it sounds more emphasized and emotional. The music is the same, but it has a greater deal of memorable moments. After all, those who admired Simple Plan’s first CD, the one released in 2002, must have grown up and adjusted their music views. Don’t they want the same from the band they have always back up through all these years? Without offering anything extraordinary or claiming place on the very top, Simple Plan keep on pleasing their audience, and their new record, Get Your Heart On is not going to upset them.