Full Review: Copeland – You Are My Sunshine

The new album from Copeland is outstanding, but not perfect. The old song which the album title is based off of describes what journey you can expect the record to take you on. Singer Aaron Marsh, has remarked “Initially, that song is very lovely and when you think of it, it immediately conjures up fine memories of your childhood, but actually it’s super creepy in the latter verses of the song. It gets quite dark”.

Greeted with room filling, layered, chorus drenched vocals along with very light keys, “Should You Return” is a warm opening track which sets the stage for the rest of the album’s tone. “The Grey Man” follows with a slightly peppier tempo an even catchier melody during the chorus. “Good Morning Fire Eater” tops my list of favorite tracks partly because of the beginning guitar picking and delicate vocals which instantly demands your attention and partly because of the second half of the song which falls into traditional Copeland territory with a wall of sound and marching lyrics rolling out from Marsh on top.

Tonal wise, the record never really breaks the cheerful, sunny persona, the same one which greets you at the start of the album. Lyrically speaking however, the record is all over the map at times diving into the darker themes. “…Everybody knows that you break your neck to keep your chin up” displays one of those times when the lyrics and tone conflict, blurring the line between “creepy” and “lovely” like the American pop song “You Are My Sunshine” does which was intentionally something that lead singer Marsh was going for. The album does a fantastic job of layering different emotions and themes during individual tracks which ultimately creates a deep, rich place for your imagination to run wild.

In each of the previous records from Copeland it felt at the time that they had to push themselves to produce that group of songs and each was very distinctively different and unique. ‘You Are My Sunshine’ is arguably different than anything else but at the same time it feels closely related to ‘Eat, Sleep, Repeat’. It’s hard to fault something for not being different enough, and I guess the music being rooted in the keys rather than the guitar is the biggest component to that feeling, but it would be the biggest (or smallest) gripe about this collection of songs.

Copeland, like a good friend, is a band that you can always count of to produce quality material. The album is fantastic from beginning to end with moments of brilliance laced through out. Any fan along with any new comer should not be disappointed in the least.

Tags: copeland, music, you are my sunshine

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Full Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.