Week 2: Start Something, by Lostprophets (part 2)
When I first heard Lostprophets, I wasn’t that big a fan yet. Thefakesoundofprogress was the first song I ever heard by them, as it was being played on MTV at the time. It was a good song (although by far not the best they’ve ever released), but they seemed to me like… Linkin Park’s little brother. They just seemed too eager to copy their big brother’s style, and they failed just as hard as any other kid would do in that situation. But we loved the little one for it, as he tried so hard, bless him.
It did make me curious as to how their other music sounded. I bought their first album, and it was immediately clear to me: this is a band looking for their own sound. It was always going to be rock oriented, sure, but you could tell that they were coming from the hardcore scene and looking for a shot at the big times. Luckily, the band has always had some really good musicians. I especially loved the guitar riffs being all “hey look at me, I’m not your typical guitar riff”, as the band tried to get a musical identity under their belt.
Now, while the songs themselves might’ve seemed incoherent at times, the album wasn’t just a collection of random songs. As has been the case with every album the band has released, the songs were well chosen, and the album really worked as a hole.
It actually worked better than their follow-up, Start Something. Despite the band’s second album being hailed as their best, and the song writing becoming stronger, I feel that the choice of songs does seem more random here. While some of the songs are reminders of the way the band used to sound, the new direction’s quite different, and this mix does not really seem to gel at times. But, as I said, the songs themselves were really good, and they make sure the album still holds up today.
I especially love the fact that the band doesn’t seem shy about wanting to be a rock band, playing rock songs on rock radio, and in big stadiums. Ok, stadium quality it might not be, but this is an album I want to hear live, in the late afternoon/early night at a summer festival, right there on the main stage.
I can easily rock out to a song like Burn Burn, which cannot fail in getting an audience on their feet. Last Train Home’s another of these crowd pleasers, hitting a little nostalgic feeling, with a chorus that you can sing along to even without knowing the words.
Everything about Start Something (well apart from the choice of songs perhaps) is just better. The songwriting has been improved, the band seem more settled on the direction they want to go into, the singing is A LOT better, and so on. Lostprophets obviously were growing, in confidence, in technique, and in songwriting.
To me, it’s just bittersweet then that they opted not to continue in this vein, and instead hop onto the emo-bandwagon (you know, the one with the trails of hair and blood dragging behind it). I didn’t mind so much on Liberation Transmission, the band’s third album, as the songs were really a lot of fun to sing along to, and some were still reminiscent of better times.
But since the release of The Betrayed, and especially now with the band’s new effort Weapons, I’ve just gradually lost interest. Which makes me sad, because there was so much potential. Ok, the only time I saw the band live wasn’t really that good, but that was also because the band’s target group had dropped significantly in age and I hadn’t, but still. What a waste.
Tomorrow, I’ll be looking at the album song by song, so stay tuned to find out which ones are my favourites, who let the dogs out, and who shot JR.
