Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Between the Tracks: Review of The Story and The Song


          The Story and The Song is the debut album of the rising indie rock band, Between The Trees. The band formed in 2005 in Florida after the band’s graduation from high school. Their roots started in a local church worship band, which this influence can be seen throughout their album. Between The Trees is a well-known supporter of TWLOHA, or To Write Love on Her Arms. To Write Love on Her Arms is an organization that helps people with drug addictions, self-injury, and thoughts of suicide. The band’s lyrics, integrity throughout album, and melody brings together an up-beat yet imperative thought-provoking ambience to their listeners.

           Between The Trees’ album, The Story and The Song, brings about lyrics of important teenage-dealt problems. Cutting, depression, and love are some of the main bases for their songs. These problems/situations are thick in this generation’s everyday life. The lyrics bring about hope and strength to keep going through life despite all of its pressures. The messages portrayed in their lyrics are crucial to society and are found to be influential in people’s lives.

           Although those topics are extremely important, the underlying subject of the whole album is the idea that Jesus Christ can help people overcome anything this world has to throw at them. This subject matter deems more importance because it provides the solution to all the problems that Between The Trees’ exposes in their music. A good thing about how they place Christianity in their lyrics is how they don’t excessively do it. This allows for their music to be more mainstream and possibly reach more people with their message. The song found to be the center stone of the album would most definitely have to be “The Way She Feels.” This song provides amazingly deep lyrics that provide the base for the album and a sweet tasting mixture of melodies that shows the potential of Between The Trees.

           What bands strive for with an album that they hopefully have high aspirations for is integrity. An album with the popularity of one song has a tough time making it up the album charts of listeners. However when a band like Between The Trees comes out with an album like The Story and The Song, integrity is shown. Laziness in song writing and music producing shows that a band does not care about the quality of music but quantity of the music that they produce. BTT shows the hard work of producing an album that expresses “Hey music listeners, we actually care about producing worthwhile music. So here is The Story and The Song!”  

           The songs on the album are varied in melody to an extent. Words, The Forward, and White Lies and Red Lights are the most up beat melodies on the album. They bring in heavy synthesizer and guitar, which help provide a unique rock essence of the CD. With songs like Darlin’ and A Time For Yohe, BTT mellows out with low guitar riffs and slow vocals. This whole album brings the right amount of music essentials to the table. Due to its amazing sound and lyrics that I can relate to, The Story and The Song easily makes my favorite album to blast and sing to.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Evaluation Responses

Flatbread Frenzy.
I should have read this evaluation before I had lunch! The way that Forrest evaluated almost every menu item and provided details of what goes into every flatbread was excellent. She made me want to read more and possible drive over to Flatbread Company and scarf down a nice Jimmy's Free Range Chicken flatbread! I feel that this evaluation was very helpful in painting a picture of what a good evaluation should look like.

Harry Potter.
Outhier's evaluation of one of the Harry Potter movies seemed scholarly. This is due to his deep descriptions of the characters, settings, and director. Outhier details the movie in a manner that only higher level-minded individuals can truly grasp the evaluation of this teenage-audience film. If he would like to have reached out to a broader audience with his evaluation of a movie that is directed towards young members of society, then he needs to change his wording around some.