Ride Your Bike

The Connection

Written by: TL on 21/10/2010 20:41:29

Your attention please! Raise your hand if you used to like pop-rock/pop-punk, but have been discouraged by the way the genre has gotten glossier and more MTV-friendly over the course of recent years. Those of you with your hands up, maybe you miss the time when the rock/punk part of those genres meant that you could actually hear the roughness and honesty from a band's emo/punk/hardcore influences. If you're now also nodding your head, stay with me as I look into "The Connection", as you might just like its paternal band Ride Your Bike.

RYB are a four-piece outfit from Los Angeles, and they're signed to Deep Elm, so quite predictably, their sound is as heavily influenced by the raw-but-warm indie/emo sound of the nineties, that many other bands on that label have also used as a point of departure. What's special about them, and what makes them distinctly likeable in my ears, is that they take that sound up-beat, making it more light-hearted and friendly to the listener than many of the emo-revivalist currently trying to revive the melancholic sound of bands like Mineral.

Instead of sounding like that, Ride Your Bike are more comparable to Saves The Day or Dashboard Confessional, standing out on their own by the way there's a constantly positive tone to their vocals preventing things from turning depressive no matter what they're singing about, effectively keeping the mood up. It's got sort of a naive vibe alá Cute Is What We Aim For, except it carries a sense of honesty belonging to a better band, such as Lydia.

With such a delightful sound, it's only a matter of putting some good songs together to succeed, and I'm happy to report that the six on offer here on "The Confidence", are all entirely enjoyable, even if they aren't quite blow-your-socks-off awesome. Personal favourites of mine include closer "Time We Took Those Chances", opener "The Connection" and middle track "Firefly", but in reality, all six are quite consistently good. So overall, I think RYB can make quite a few fans off the back of this release, and given that their sound is also off to a great start, I consider them ones to watch for the future.

7

Download: Time We Took Those Chances, The Connection
For The Fans Of: Dashboard Confessional, Saves The Day, Tigers Jaw
Listen: myspace.com/rideyourbike

Release Date 19.05.2010
Deep Elm Records

Related Items | How we score?
Comments
comments powered by Disqus

Legal

© Copyright MMXXIV Rockfreaks.net.