Bouncing Souls: Anchors Aweigh

Bouncing Souls: Anchors Aweigh

2003

Epitaph Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Apartment 5F  2. Kids and Heroes 3. New Day  4. Sing Along Forever  5. Born Free   6. Inside Out  7. Simple Man  8. Better Days  9. Night Train  10. Todd's Song  11. Blind Date  12. Highway Kings  13. Anchors Aweigh  14. I Get Lost  15. The Day I Turned My Back On You  16. I'm from There


I was very interested to hear this again...I think this was really the album responsible for getting me out of the Bouncing Souls. Which was quite an achievement, given the endless hours  I'd spent listening to their run of albums up to "How I Spent My Summer Vacation"... I've done previous posts about many of those albums and I think that I briefly touched on my "bleh" feelings toward "Achors Aweigh.".

But I don't blame the band...Again, I think I touched on this subject in my post for the self-titled Blink 182 album, but I kinda categorize this whole era of music as the "bleh" period where most music felt overly morose or hollowly uplifting...9/11 was still a very raw wound back then and a good-time party band like the Bouncing Souls were going to sound like boneheads if they put out an album bragging about wearing Adidas as the world was falling apart around them...Plus, they're human beings too, as far as I know...I'm sure bragging about wearing Adidas was the last thing on their minds during this time too...As I recall, most folks were still paralyzed by fear in 2003...

"Anchors Aweigh" almost pulls it off though...It's a mix of some of my favorite and some of my least favorite Bouncing Souls stuff...I'll start with the least favorite stuff first, so I can end this on a positive note: Songs like "New Day" and "Born Free" sound like your typical Bouncing Souls fist-pumpers but somehow come off as empty...And "Sing Along Forever" urges us to sing along, but to what exactly? The melody is just...bleh......Compare this to "87" or "Kid"...Now those were proper sing-a-longs...They had gusto...spirit...This just sounds like a rousing shrug...Then there's a series of bleak, ugly hardcore-ish tracks like "Inside Out," "Blind Date" and "Better Days" which also don't do much for me...

But just when you're ready to give up on the whole thing,  the second half of the record shocks the hell out of you by being absolutely full of awesomeness...Some of the best tracks show the Bouncing Souls were surprisingly adept at emo..."Night Train," "Todd's Song" and the title track have tons of autumnal atmosphere and towering instrumentation...Big, heartfelt sing-a-longs that give the impression that if the band had dropped the hardcore and all the hollow-anthems-striving-for-universality and  made a mellow, more introspective album they might have had a real-deal homerun here...My God, is the title track stunning...Suddenly they achieve that moody,  moonlit feel of the front cover...Probably my all-time favorite Bouncing Souls song...My other favorite track is "The Day I Turned My Back On You" which is no-bullshit punk where they finally summon up some of that old fighting spirit, but take it so much further with a bit of hard-won wisdom..."I Get Lost " is another anthem that would stand shoulder to shoulder with anything on their previous albums... The "Whoa-oh-oh's" at the end of "Highway Kings" also deserve a shout-out for sheer transcendence...

So in the end what we have is a rare example of that elusive creature, the back-loaded album...It's a huge chore for me to get through the first half and the second half makes me wish it wouldn't end (despite the false ending after the knockout "I'm from There")...I'm glad I revisited this, although it's still a little odd to hear a Bouncing Souls album that's no fun whatsoever...But if you can stomach the idea of a more mature Bouncing Souls, then go for it...I still haven't listened to a single Bouncing Souls album that came out after this one...Still taking recommendations...

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