...but I won't haunt you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artist: Sullivan

Album: Hey, I'm a Ghost

Label: Tooth and Nail

Tracks:11

Length:40:57

Review by: Cal Callison

 

 

Sullivan’s artist bio starts out with the statement that “America’s next great emotional rock band has arrived.”  The statement in and of itself is nauseating to me.  Like many others, I appreciate great ranges of emotions in my music, yet the blatant marketing of that very thing caused me to have a bad taste in my mouth before even putting the album in the CD player.

 

            The band, based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina consists of Brooks Paschal, Zach Harward, Tyson Shipman, and Phil Chamberlain, the latter being the brother of Spencer Chamberlain of Underoath.  The music is crafted of soaring guitars, adequate drumming, and the snotty vocals of Paschal.  You’ll find lots of stereotypical new-emo elements on this album.  The vocal dynamics can be compared to the Juliana Theory, from whispered elements backed by drum beats to soaring chorus lines, all done in the all too familiar high scene kid voice.  And those hook-laden choruses are here.  I can almost see the black clad Chuck Taylor crowd singing along and clapping in syncopation.

 

            Matt Goldman produced this disc and it shows.  With the mention of their connection to Underoath right there in the bio, I couldn’t help but cringe when in the first song Paschal sings, “ find your exit, find your exit, don’t you want to find your exit because the door swings both ways.”  It might just be me but there’s a bit too much similarity there for me to look at Sullivan objectively as a creative band.

 

            Overall, the album suffers from much of the same mediocrity that comes when a genre becomes popular and spawns many similar bands.  There’s really nothing new or even interesting here.  After the first listen I had to force myself to put the disc back in for another listen.  The problem with that fact is that I couldn’t write the review because I couldn’t remember anything that stood out about the band.  And that my friends, is a major problem.