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Howie Day’s new album disappoints

Written by Kegan Sandoval, The Shorthorn senior staff

Monday, 21 September 2009 05:21 PM

Howie Day’s success has been a slow and rugged process. His third full-length album, Sound the Alarm, may make his journey even more of a struggle.

Review

Album: Sound the Alarm
Artist: Howie Day
Label: Epic Records
Genre: Pop
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Howie Day’s success has been a slow and rugged process. His third full-length album, Sound the Alarm, may make his journey even more of a struggle.

From 2003 to 2008, Day exhausted a lot of effort in touring relentlessly to promote his album Stop All the World Now. Merely a year later, he has released an album, Sound the Alarm, which could use some touch-ups. It’s hard to see how an album could fall so far from hits like “Collide” and “She Says,” which are quintessential pop medleys.

The cover of Sound the Alarm shows a suit-dressed Day floating in a pool, which is how the album sounds — confusing. The single, “Be There,” starts off with pleasant guitar plucking, but the lyrics don’t fit the mood. He’s singing about being someone to look up to, but if you aren’t paying attention to the lyrics it sounds like an uplifting, inspirational ballad.

A lot of songs in the album have a catchy intro like “Everybody Loves a Lie,” which begins like a Beatles song with a somber piano medley and aching vocals. The song is more composed and lyrical than the last half of the album. Unfortunately, it takes six songs into the album to find a song worth tapping your foot to the beat.

Day would have had more success if he moved songs like “Everybody Loves a Lie” and “Undressed” to the album’s beginning. The album’s first quarter is so sluggish that the tone has already been set by the time the pace picks up.

A lot of his lyrics consist of simple rhymes like “My world is set ablaze/ By a never-ending haze” in “40 years,” but “Everybody Loves a Lie” shows more poignant lyrics like “She’s a vision of poetry/Not sure just where she is crashing.”

“Undressed” is a sexy, island-pop guitar song about physical attraction. In the song, Day sings “I must confess I like us best undressed.”
It sounds less like he is trying to make a song and more like he’s letting go of his raw feelings.

But when the album begins showing potential, a slew of songs brings it all down. “No Longer What You Require” is a wordy ballad, leaving Day jumbling words into offbeat rhythms. When the song hits an awkward section, Day intensifies the situation by throwing in vocal scales that continue to throw off the rhythm.

The album might sell with teenagers but doesn’t float with audiences he won over with his first albums. As if Day wasn’t already creeping into the darkness, this album surely won’t thrust him onto the charts.