Four Year Strong - Explains It All [Album]
 

Four Year Strong are currently writing their new album so it came as a huge surprise to me when I received what appeared to be the new Four Year Strong album in the mail for review. What? Hopefully you are as confused as I was.

So I put the record on and set to find out what was happening here. Turns out that during the process of putting a song together for the Pop Goes Punk II album, Four Year Strong had a lot of difficulty actually pinpointing one song to cover as they realized there was a shed load of songs from the 90s that they wanted to have fun covering as it reminded them of all the great things from their childhood; airwalks, goosebump books, the movies, JNCO jeans and everything else in between. This is where "Explains It All" comes in. It is an 11 track covers album including all the songs that Four Year Strong grew up on and loved during their childhood. Imagine it as a tool to get into the minds of the Four Year Strong boys during their childhoods and to understand the influences behind the band.

Apparently, Four Year Strong decided to do the covers album on a Saturday and were in the studio on the Monday making it a reality. No messing around there then! They have called in the help of a bunch of their band friends for the album who all jumped on board for guest appearances some of which include Keith from Everytime I Die, Travis from Gym Class Heroes and JR and Buddy from Less than Jake.

There are some great covers on this CD and there are some rather embarrassing ones. The most embarrassing of all is their cover of "Ironic" by Alanis Morrisette. Boys singing songs written by girls never come out well and this is a prime example, it's cringeworthy and although I appreciate it is meant to be slightly tongue in cheek I can't help but feel bad and embarresed for the guys. Big bearded men singing "It's like meeting the man of your dreams, and then meeting his beautiful wife" is enough to make anyone laugh in their faces, hence the canned laughter on the actual song aswell.

Highlights include "Bullet With Butterfly Wings", originally by Smashing Pumpkins, "Spiderwebs", originally by No Doubt and "In Bloom", originally by Nirvana. The rest of the songs are either just OK or were originally Punk or Ska and as such haven't really changed that much from the original track at all. Examples of this include "Semi-Charmed Life", "Roll To Me", "She Really Loved You" and "She's So High".

All in all this is an OK album, by a good band that seem to shine most on the songs they have covered from bands outside of the Punk genre and sub-genres i.e. Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins. It is nice to see that the Four Year Strong boys have been inspired by and enjoy music outside of their immediate genre. An album of covers like these two would have been legendary but Four Year Strong have played it safe with only two really amazingly daring covers and 9 extremely safe ones. "Explains It All" is likely to go down well with fans of the band as they will probably be the opposite of me and enjoy the nine songs that I didn't enjoy that much as they are within their genre of choice. I was also disappointed in the distinct lack of beat downs on this record compared to the original Four Year Strong material. "Ironic" could have been changed from embarrassing to legendary for example if it had an amazing musical beat down in the middle. Who says covering a song means you need to copy the arrangement and structure aswell?

I am still looking forward to the new Four Year Strong album and, if you are fan of Four Year Strong then "Explain It All" will keep your appetite whet until this gets completed, however don't expect this release to hange your life and don't expect this record to be on constant loop either as it gets old after only a few listens.