Artist: The Submarines
Album: Declare a New State
Label: Nettwerk
Tracks: 10
Length: 38:31
Review By: John Durkee

 An album about the destruction of a once great romance isn’t exactly the newest thing to pop music, but The Submarines debut album, Declare a New State, is a new chapter to this long running song book of a torrid love affair gone wrong… Except for one difference, Blake Hazard and John Dragonetti are singing about each other, rather than some unrelated person. You see, the two had been involved romantically while touring together in Europe through their own perspective bands. Upon moving to California together, they broke up on the 2004 California Presidential Primary, and consequently is the subject of the song “Vote.” For most this sort of project would bring people further apart, but in this case it brought Hazard and Dragonetti’s relationship back together.
 
Before I knew of the duo’s prior relationship, the album came off as a depressing but hopeful album of great electronic folk pop songs. While the new information doesn’t really change any of that, it adds far more substance and depth to this collection of songs, as now there is a proper context for them, and they allow you to know a little something more about the artist.
 
Picture Leigh Nash and Ben Gibbard making an album together (vocally), with simplistic song structure, but a lot of different instruments and looped beats here and there. Standout songs are “Peace and Hate” as it fully encapsulates the message of the album as lovers once scorned who are brought together, “Hope” with it’s ironically and melancholy delivered chorus of “Ain’t no sunshine gonna take away this rain,” and “Brighter Discontent” as it describes the futile search for purpose in materialism and the desire to be with the one person they truly love most. “Modern Inventions” and “Darkest Things” deserve a mention as well, with “Modern Inventions” electronic sound that borders on psychedelic and “Darkest Things” hushed dark sound with its excellent transition to a great ending in a direct shift in sound.

Put in a nutshell, Declare a New State is an album of pretty, sad songs about love lost and now re-conquered.