The Pelican’s Perch

Radiohead was fantastic. First time I’ve caught them live and they’ve been one of my favorite bands forever. Didn’t know if it’d live up to my insanely high expectations, but I walked out of there feeling very pleased with the show. All the guys in Radiohead joked around quite a bit in between songs, so that was a nice unexpected plus to the show. But seriously people, if you have a chance to see them on this tour…do it! So good. Now on to the review:

Ah good ‘ol Phantom Planet. The band I’ve liked forever, having randomly stumbled upon their debut Phantom Planet is Missing a long time ago. “Jason Schwartzman is in a band?!” I remember thinking that as I listened to the actor’s band. “Recently Distressed” won me over and their fun pop sound kept me coming back. Then The Guest was released and it was even better than their debut. But the O.C. came along and my love for Phantom Planet was forever tainted by the fact that it wasn’t cool to like a band that was on the O.C. What are you? 14 years old? So, Phantom Planet and I just kept truckin along until their follow-up self-titled album was released and found them being much more “bad ass rock star” sounding, which I was quite turned off by at first. It eventually grew on me, but I didn’t like how they’d lost most of the great pop sound out of nowhere that I’d enjoyed so much.

Fast forward to the present and we’ve got their new release, Raise the Dead, which is their first on Fueled by Ramen. The title track starts the album with acoustic guitar and shakers recalling their old pop style, which made me very happy to hear. More parts just keep building on top of each other until the explosive chorus comes in and Alex Greenwald is screaming the song title. Someone threw in an Arcade Fire comparison in a review I recently read in describing the song, and while I can’t hear Arcade Fire anywhere in this song, I’ll definitely admit, it borders on epic for sure.

I believe Rolling Stone’s review called it Phantom Planet’s best album yet, and while I’m glad they said that for pure publicity’s sake for the band, I’d more go the route of saying it captures bits and pieces from all their past albums, the pop from their debut, the commercial sound from The Guest, and the attitude and pure speaker rockin guitars from their self-titled album. So, basically there’s something here for everyone. It’s hard to say at this point if this new album will eclipse any of their previous albums, since I haven’t had enough listens, but it’s not out of the question at all.

The third song, “Leader”, is by far my favorite song. Not even close. Word to the wise my friends. If you’re a musician and can’t pull off having strings in your songs but still want me to love the song, have a choir of little kids sing the chorus and hum behind the verses. The song itself is one of the better ones Phantom Planet have written, but the kids just put it over the edge. That song is followed by “Do the Panic”, a song that was on The Guest’s bonus disc as a live performance, but one that hadn’t been recorded until now. So, that made me happy to hear.

As the album progresses, that driving rock sound from their self-titled album gets more and more prevalent with each passing song. “Demon Daughters” would fit easily on their self-titled release, with its guitar turned to 11 sound and Greenwald’s cocky swagger of a vocal line. “Geromino” has a driving chorus that very well could be the background music to Apocalypto as they’re marching through the jungle to war. They never return completely to that mostly rock/barely pop sound from the previous album, always throwing some sort of vintage Phantom Planet pop element in the harder songs, but I wish they would have taken the cue from the first few songs and kept going that direction. Take “Confess” for example. Great string melody behind the verses, acoustic strumming, fun electric guitar fills and drums, then the chorus comes in and all of a sudden everyone’s going crazy on their instruments in an almost non-melodic, white noise sort of guitar explosion. It doesn’t happen much on this album, but I just don’t understand how they can write consistent pop songs like “Leader” and “Leave Yourself for Somebody Else”, which never overdo the electric guitar and keep to their pop routes, then write a song like “Confess”, which is a good song with an oddly out of place loud overdriven guitar chorus.

That’s just my own personal gripe, but other than their tendency to rock out instead of sticking to their pop roots for an entire album, I’m plenty satisfied with Raise the Dead. It starts with four great songs, ends strongly, and gets a little bumpy towards the last third of the album, but even those songs are growing on me with more listens. If you’re a Phantom Planet fan, new or old, you’ll enjoy this album. Maybe not the whole thing, but the majority of it I’m sure. If you’re one of those people who’ve long since dismissed ever giving Phantom Planet a chance because they were O.C. darlings, I’d recommend giving this new album a spin as it’s a nice representation of all their previous styles conveniently contained in 12 new songs. I was pretty excited to hear this new album and I’m glad it didn’t disappoint. It gets my recommendation and I’m sure most of you will be pleasantly surprised once you finally listen to it. Plus, summer’s almost here. What better time than summer for a little Phantom Planet?

Phantom Planet
Raise the Dead
Perch Score: 8.423

01. Raise The Dead [mp3]

02. Dropped [mp3 via Sixeyes]
03. Leader [mp3]

04. Do The Panic
05. Quarantine
06. Ship Lost At Sea
07. Demon Daughters
08. Geronimo
09. Too Much Too Often
10. Confess
11. Leave Yourself For Somebody Else
12. I Don’t Mind

Official Site / Myspace / Youtube channel (kids singing Leader)
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