Yellowcard- Ocean Avenue (2003)

Another installment of the "albums you really should know, I mean- come on, seriously?" series.

Yellowcard- Ocean Avenue (2003)

1. "Way away" – 3:22
2. "Breathing" – 3:38
3. "Ocean Avenue" – 3:18
4. "Empty Apartment" – 3:36
5. "Life of a Salesman" – 3:18
6. "Only One" – 4:17
7. "Miles Apart" – 3:32
8. "Twentythree" – 3:27
9. "View From Heaven" – 3:22
10. "Inside Out" – 3:40
11. "Believe" – 4:31
12. "One Year, Six Months" – 3:28
13. "Back Home" – 3:55

I can't quite recall how I got into yellowcard, all I know is I did and I did hard. It was sort of around my first year at oxford college and I heard about them and tried to download them but only got looped tracks, remember those days?! Well someone said I really should just go out and buy it and I did. Fell in love with it, recorded it onto cassette so I could listen on my walkman. Those really were the days eh.

A relentless power and energy swarm over this album only letting up for some truy poignant masterpieces. It kicks off with "way away", typical of the former. Violins and light metal guitar lines giving you a break during the middle eight of a truly storming track. Live this must be immense but this album captures it perfectly.

"Breathing" creates a claustrophobic atmosphere, the lyrical themes quite brilliant and well delivered but the incessant drumming coupled with the underscoring shrill of the violin are carried through by intermittant guitar, heavy and light in all the right places. The title track is after this, ocean avenue, and it's great. Nostalgia over the intoxication of past summers but almost so much so that it could have underlined any number of angsty scene on the o.c. It's got 4 stars on my i pod cos I just love it!

Life of a salesman is a tricky one. I didn't used to like it so much but then my dad died and it held a little more resonance. It's not a particuly track but if you have a similar point of view to approach this track from it really is quite poignant.

Only one and miles apart are similar tracks to one another thematically but in style intensely different. The latter being a little lighter with more optimistic vocalsrather than the desperate feel of the only one.

Kinda get into the masterpieces now, view from heaven is just beautiful. I think I even loved this before anyone died but now 5 years later with jackey, jo, matt, dad, jeff, grandad and rheal dying prematurely this song has just become so much more than what it was. "Late night drives all alone in my car, I can't help but start singing lines from all our faovurite songs". The song is almost dismissive in a way, giving the feeling that things don't really matter so much down here and you'll all be together again eventually anyway.

Now Believe is pretty much the anthem of yellowcard. The song is about the firefighters who lost their lives saving the lives of people trapped inside the world trade centre during the events of september 11th 2001...

"Again today we take into our hearts and minds those who perished on this site one year ago, and also those who came to toil in the rubble to bring order out of chaos, and help us make sense of our despair." ~ Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of NYC

"The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." ~ The Gettysburg address

Fact of the matter is even if this album was just the tracks that I haven't reccomended here, it would still be a fantastic album. I just wrote this in my lunch hour so a thesis might have been a bit much. Truth is all the albums I post in the "Albums you should own" series are flawless without exception. With only maybe one or two exceptions ;)