Alright, first of all, let me just say that a lot of Indianola's signing have given me a "you're just trying to sound like Poison The Well"-type of feeling. If you don't know who or what I'm talking about, listen to Across Five Aprils, Glory Of This...and now A Day To Remember (note, there are probably more, but well...I just don't really listen to much of Indianola's bands, whilst I own the full-lengths to all three of these bands that all give off a very PTW-type vibe, except, well, not as good). For me though, this isn't such a band thing since Poison the Well remains one of my favorite bands.
So now, I know what you're thinking: This is just another band that sings with awkward screams dispersed throughout their songs. But in reality, it is quite the opposite. This band is able to pull off their screaming, while making the singing the awkward part. Why? Well, at times they can be nasally (shocking, huh?), and well, to put it simply, cheesy. Take for example the first actual track "Heartless" where the main vocal approach is actually brutal, until 58 seconds into the song the band throws the melodic vocalist singing just the word "tears" in the middle of the deep-throated vocalist's line, throwing the whole moment off.
But that's just the first song. This album strongly diversifies the roles of the singers. Some tracks remain mainly hard, while the others retain the poppiness of another vocalist (who I view as the weaker of the two) who closely resembles that of Saves The Day, Down To Earth Approach or other Vagrant-style bands, whilst the harder vocalist reminds me more of Misery Signals or, like I said before, Poison The Well.
Despite the addition of several somewhat corny and confusing yet fitting audio clips throughout several tracks that remind me of Across Five Apirl's "A Tragedy In Progress" -- and yes, the prerequisite acoustic song "You Had Me At Hello" which because of my "chick / pussy music" or emo tendencies I actually enjoyed -- this band does give a strong debut effort for a young, upstart band, though they do have room for growth in the lyric department, among other things. While I wouldn't be suprised if they're one of the bands that lasts for a short time (say two CDs or so), I also see their potential and wouldn't be suprised if they were able to surpass the clichés and unoriginalitly that plagues their scene to find a sound their own, something they've already attempted at with their spoken-word moments in which they're actually able to make an actual contribution to the song, whereas other bands just try to add them in to make them sound "deeper" or whatever the fuck you want to call it.
All in all, if you like any of Indianola's previous releases (mainly Across Five Aprils) you'll most likely enjoy this. As long as you don't want to think to much about what it is you're actually listening to, and just want to enjoy it, this is a fun record to listen to.