Southern Air- Yellowcard Album Review
With their 7th album out called Southern Air the band Yellowcard has gone from starting off as a “hardcore punk” band to now being considered “pop punk” or “alternative rock”, basically the perfect KMSC music. They don’t have a lot of curse words, which makes this band very alternative radio format friendly. Yellowcard’s band members consisted of vocals and guitar Ryan Key. Violin and vocals Sean Mackin, Ryan Mendez on guitar and vocals, and Josh Portman on bass they have been together since 1997. Sean Mackin is known for doing flips during shows on stage. Florida natives and the perfect band to compare them too and also a native Florida are their real life friends from We The Kings. But they aren’t any normal punk rock band, they have a violin in all their songs, some songs you cant hear it and others you can really hear it. As weird as that sounds for a punk rock band, they make it work extremely well!
Southern Air released in 2012 and was recorded with Hopeless Records, is a shorter album. With only 10 songs, and only taking 40 minutes exactly to listen to it, it leaves you wanting more and wondering why some of their songs didn’t end better then how they ended it. For example, Here I am alive, just stops. As he’s singing and music is playing and next thing I know I’m thinking something is wrong with my iTunes or computer because it just stops playing, and I quickly go into iTunes and realize the song just stops and that’s how it ends. Same thing happened with Always Summer.
Sleep in the snow, Surface of the sun and a vicious kind really where just “eh” songs. Telescope has very repetitive lyrics, which leaves me bored and tired of the song really quickly. Awakening is a good upbeat song, probably one of my top songs from this album. Rivertown is too “hardcore” for me. Very “mosh pit” “head banger” song to me. Ten is my number one favorite from this album. It’s laid back more acoustic sounding song. It sounds like there’s some type of sliding guitar, which makes it seem very country but they really pulled it off! Very cute lyrics and a nice break from the hard punk that the last song (Rivertown) was. Also the longest song on the album but I never got bored of it. The violin really stands out in this song I really enjoyed that. The last song on the album is the title named song. Southern Air just like a few other on this album is just a “eh” song to me. The chorus is good but the versus are just eh to me.
Before I was handed this album to listen to and review I didn’t think I knew them. I thought I’d maybe heard of them before but now sure where or how. Then after researching about them I figured out their most popular song is Ocean Avenue. They also have been on Warped Tour a handful of times and since I’m a We The Kings fan, I know a little about Warped Tour and a few of the other bands who are apart of it, like Yellowcard. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this album but I won’t recommend a few of the songs. Like Ten, Ten is my most favorite with a close second of Here I am alive.