Lost Songs

by

Anberlin

Edit

2007 has become the year to gather up all the songs that have been laying around not making any money for a band and put them all together on a record to sale. "Lost Songs" is a collection of b-sides, demos, covers, and acoustic songs that the band has collected over the years.

The acoustic songs are fantastic and may very well be worth the cost of the album for a lot of people. The quality is very good, both on the AOL session tracks and the other acoustic songs. "Dismantle. Repair." is one of the best acoustic tracks on the album which may simply be because it's one of the band's best songs to date but it may also be because the acoustic version gives the song a different perspective from the original.

Some of the B-sides such as "The Haunting", "Uncanny" and "Downtown Song" are terrific and will probably make you ask why they didn't appeared on the record that they were recorded for.

The cover songs which are scattered through out the record are another thing that this band has almost perfected. "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" is a song however that could have even been left off this rarities album and I would have been just fine with it. The song is skip-able and the worst of the bunch. The band does do a fairly good job of making the covers their own but not losing the appeal that the original had.

All in all this is pretty solid release one that may be geared more for current fans of the band but should not leave new comers wanting their money back.

4.6 out of 5

I love Anberlin, but this album might have come a little too early to be worth the full price. For die hard fans, nothing on this album is new. It's nice to have a real copy of tracks that previously were only heard through internet sites, but you're also paying for tracks you already bought from download services, on B-Sides, or on special edition CDs. For casual listeners, the album takes the band sideways rather than forward and generally is less entertaining than the studio albums. It definitely feels like the record label was trying to put a final stamp on the Anberlin brand and make a few more dollars before the band heads off to greener pastures.

All that said, Downtown Song is probably the best track on here. It's a great track from the Never Take Friendship Personal era that was previously unavailable outside of an internet bootleg. The acoustics give us some new spins on some old favorites... the best of these is the new "A Day Late" version. However, it's hard to give it more than a cursory nod given the greatness of the original track.

Bottom line: The material is thin and there are a lot of tracks here that you could have bought elsewhere. Buy this to round out your collection, but don't expect it to blow you away.