The Way I Feel Today

by

Six by Seven

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Here's a trackbytrack:

So Close - Begins with piano and voice but builds into a wall of sound, haunting, cage-rattling number just as many on the last album.

IOU Love - Very un-Six By Seven. Very beautiful, passionate love song. I absolutely adored it until I realised it owes more than a passing debt to "Love Song" by The Cure. Still, however, by all accounts an amazing track.

All My New Best Friends - A beautiful acoustic ballad, again untypical of the band. Lovely, though, a nocturnal beauty resides in it - reminiscent of the acoustic tracks on Radiohead's The Bends.

Flypaper For Freaks - "I never promised you ... !" screams Chris Olley to open this track before a cacophony of mad guitars enter. Here's a really heavy, thrashalong, punky track.

Speed Is In/Speed Is Out - Veers between tight, controlled menace of the verses and the all-out undiluted screaming fury of the brilliant bridge and chorus.

Karen O - A throbbing bass beat and layers of guitars give it a very Six By Seven-ish feel, but this seems to me one of the weaker tracks overall.

American Beer - A perfect centerpiece. Heartbreaking, building beauty of a song - "Nobody told me it would be like this/nobody showed me how to care". Fantastic lyrics, great music...the best track they've ever done I'd say.

Anyway - An upbeat, cool rock song which is great for a singalong.

The Way I Feel Today - A cathartic track of getting over a broken heart and being happy and free. Really joyful, and accompanied by that wall of sound again.

Cafeteria Rats - Thrashing, nasty track with a brilliantly sneered vocal from Chris Olley.

Bad Man - Another fast, angry punky one. Not the greatest to close on, but not bad either.

With their third release The Way I Feel Today, Six by Seven tempers their feedback frenzies long enough to explore a newfound attraction to melody. Chris Olley's vocals are reminiscent of Coldplay's Chris Martin (though The Way I Feel Today was released internationally before Coldplay's latest), and some of the music has a dreamy compression worthy of The Church at their best. (One song - "I.O.U. Love" - owes more to The Church; namely, royalties for stealing the melody of "Under a Milky Way".) Fans of the band's crash'n'burn won't be disappointed; half these tracks clock in at a speedy 2 minute average. You'd think the effect would be schizophrenic, but it's far from it. The reflective songs are there to remind us what we do after the rage is spent.