Park

No Signal (2001)

Hein Terweduwe

I'm doing something now, I normally never would do…writing a review before I even listened through the whole disc. And this is not because I don't like it, in fact it's a great emo-pop blast that's coming out of my speakers here and I just felt the need to write something now, because I have that good feeling with this one, and I feel these thoughts I'm having could get lost if I would write down something later. Lobster is a label that doesn't release a load of albums every year, but my god, haven't they offered us some quality over the past years. Park, a foursome out of Springfield, Illinois is no exception to it. The "Emo"-word covers a wide variety of sounds these days and I must say I feel we are getting a bit flooded by all these emo-pop-punk bands these days which made me grab back to quite some heavier stuff over the last few months (see what emo can do for hardcore hey?). But something like Park, with these phenomenal vocals of Ladd Mitchell that really interact perfectly with the catchy (more melodic sounding then any other emo-band) guitars, convinces me more then ever that punk is a genre that is NOT narrow. Cameron Webb (Junction 18, Lit, Dynamite Boy), did another great producing-job, making sure that this has not evolved into a sleepery, mellow collection of songs. Not a trivial job considering a lot of songs are 4-5 minutes long. Maybe I would have rated it even higher if it would have been a bit more hooky, something they're not aiming for though I guess. I would call it a perfect crossing between the Alkaline Trio and Midtown, while also bands like Counterfit, NFG and Further Seems Forever come to mind. Actually I guess you could say this is a band that you'd bet they were on Vagrant, but maybe Lobster wanted something of the emo-pie themselves and I think they have taken a big chunk out of it. Anyway, you won't be surprised to hear that this one has its own accoustic song, and believe me, although I always have been a bit opposed to those… it's finger-licking good.