Fang Island - Fang Island (Sargent House)

Fang Island’s fast paced debut, layered with big boisterous guitar, fits like a glove in the current American scene. Describing their music as “everyone high fiving everyone”, they are so much happier than you or I. It’s the prog-metal equivalent of Bastian from The NeverEnding Story raising his fist and triumphantly yelling “YEEAAH!”

I like music that takes on simple, child inspired philosophies and what drew me to Fang Island was a recorded video on their MySpace page where they perform to a kindergarten class. The jubilation and wide eyed expressions on the kid’s faces as they hop about to the hardcore jams was wonderful stuff. It was funny to think of a parallel between these classroom antics and that of any adult rock club filled with immature goofballs (the sad difference is that children express themselves truthfully, don’t have horrendous egos and don’t smear crap in their hair to be cool. They do it because…well…they just do it.)

Stop-and-start rhythm changes between the band are expertly controlled and the four guitarists display impressive skill and sweet solos that Boston would be proud of. It warrants the use of great phrases such as ‘head banging’ and ‘kick ass’, especially in tracks such as ‘Careful Crossers’ with its tricky rhythms and battling riffs. Unfortunately the collective vocal chanting found in their single ‘Daisy’ and later in ‘Davey Crockett’ ruins it. These sing-a-long brayings of ‘oooh’s’ and ‘woah woah woah’s’ get old very quickly; ultimately becoming banal sighs in the place of, you know, actual words. Their goal to draw grand, truthful emotion from us seems all too familiar.

Graduating from Rhode Island School of Design (the origin of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Lightning Bolt and Talking Heads) they throw out any evidence of art school subtlety. It doesn’t take long to figure Fang Island as feel-good teenage thrash pop propelling a single, continuously chipper mood. Sometimes, just sometimes it brings to mind those god-awful mobile phone advertisements where hoards of douche bags sing with each other in false unity. Hey everyone! Come on! Let’s get together! Groan.

Compared with their predecessors, Fang Island have moved in an altogether different direction. Their achievements are their glorification of the present moment, the way they capture the manic excitement you used to feel before a trip to a theme park. Their compact album is in touch with a youthful exuberance and contains some masterful musicianship and hum-worthy melodies. Too bad then that its upbeat tone, great at first, reveals no further dimension beyond ludicrously happy. And please, no more Arcade Fire vocal choruses. They’re losing their allure.