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| Let's start off this post with a beautiful spoiler! |
Let's breakdown what these kids had to offer this past Sunday.
The Choice
The Choice certainly combines a unique mesh of musical influences into one distinct sound. Their combination of jazz fusion, latin, and alternative rock is certainly one that you won't find just anywhere but may remind you of a laid back Pennywise. Although their style is unique; it did seem to leave, not just me, but the audience generally uninterested. It also didn't help that their stage presence was very low key. Overall, not a bad performance but a band probably worth checking out anyways especially if you are into any of the aforementioned genres. I would give you a link to a website or Facebook page if I could find one but, alas, my search engine results turned up empty.
Captain Scurvy and the Scumdawg Millionair$
Just the name of this band and how random it is will probably catch your attention more than The Choice. Captain Scurvy and the Scumdawg Millionair$ are mostly a pop-punk cover band with a slight arrrrrgggh!!! every now and then. What I mean by that is that they have a giant pirate flag that they wave around sometimes and one of the band members will occasionally put on a pirate hat he found at a Spirit Halloween. For the most part, they sound okay doing their Fall Out Boy and Sum 41 covers with the occasional metalcore cover but the singer loses his tone for extended periods of time even when the song doesn't require any screamo. I think with a little bit of work, the singer can improve his endurance and become fine for live performances; especially since he does bring quite a bit of stage presence. Until then, Captain Scurvy and the Scumdawg Millionair$ are quite average at best.
Far-Sighted
Far-Sighted are a three piece 50s - 60s style rock band that does almost exclusively covers. I can't say that I quite remember which songs they covered but I do remember that they did do a very stripped down 50s version of The Black Key's "Howling For You" which wasn't too bad. What you will remember about Far-Sighted is that all three musicians are very talented at the instruments that they play. They have a very polished sound and play some tricky licks at times. Despite this, they weren't really blowing me out of the water due to lack of stage presence and originality. However, it makes sense that they had made it this far on the account that the judges were older, middle-aged individuals that are probably more prone to enjoying that kind of music.
If you're into old school rock and roll, Far-Sighted are definitely a band worth checking out.
Bright Abyss
My first impression of Bright Abyss was that they were going to be a Panic at the Disco! cover band; considering that they were wearing skinny ties and the drummer had a violin. I am so glad that I was wrong because they ended up being much better than that. They ended up being a pretty good outer space kind of take on pop-punk and metal. The lyrics are generally profound (especially for high school kids) with content that often draws a comparison to or directly talks about interstellar phenomena. The instruments sounded well-composed just about all around except when the keyboards got a bit excessive in a melody kind of role. What I mean by that is that their genre would turn from outer space sounds in punk to ambient outer space music (not necessarily what I would go to a concert to see).
Based on the relatively unique approach to pop-punk here, I'm interested to see how this band develops within the near future. They're worth giving a listen.
Jaded State
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| Rocco Sabatino of Jaded State |
Jaded State stole the show right away. They came out sounding excellent and polished along with the energy to draw the crowd in; something that none of the prior bands had done. Like usual, they draw the crowd in by encouraging the crowd singing responses to the stage (similar to what Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day does). Without repeating what I said before about Jaded State, this performance holds up with the other performances that I had seen of them. Once again, they ended their set with their most popular original "You've Got Guilt" which I think is pretty good. In the last post about Jaded State, I gave a link to their website which has a pretty lousy music player. So I included this poorly spell checked video that some random person uploaded to YouTube instead. It works much better. I do recommend giving the song a listen. It's pretty good.
You can also buy Jaded State's EP Basic Cable on iTunes.
I actually ended up buying it because I had an iTunes gift card lying around. I don't like Apple or iTunes but I figure if I can support a solid local band with it, why not?
Anyways, one other thing I want to mention about Jaded State at this point is the confusion I have over what their actual band name is. Is it one or two words? Their Facebook page has it as two words; their Twitter page has it as two words. But, iTunes has it as one word along with the video I embedded above this. On top of that their website, jadedstate.com, has it as both one word and two words depending on what you're looking at. As far as writing these posts go, I'll keep doing two words because that makes more sense to me.
Since this was a battle of the bands, there were winners and losers. When the judges announced their decision, they chose Jaded State as the winners who barely edged out Far-Sighted by one and a half points (whatever that means). I think at the end of the day, they chose the right band as unclose I thought it was. However, if I were to rank them, I probably would have placed Bright Abyss just behind Far-Sighted with Jaded State being a clear winner. But at the end of the day, I think that the right band was chosen to be the winner.
On the other hand, according to Far-Sighted's Facebook page, despite a second place finish, they were still invited to play at the final round of the Teen Battle of the Bands with Jaded State in Springfield so I guess there was a wildcard spot or something.
Overall, it was a good day to hear some music. The weather was good and the music was generally better. I'm not sure yet if I'll trek down to Springfield for the finals but I suppose you will find out depending on if there's a post about it or not.
Anyways, have a good day and keep cool.
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