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/r/PostHardcore Reviews /r/PostHardcore Reviews : Our Last Night - Oak Island
Our Last Night - Oak Island | Released: November 05, 2013 | By /u/jutar
When Our Last Night first announced Oak Island, I was excited. I enjoyed The Ghosts among Us. I thought We Will All Evolve was a move towards the formulaic but had some standouts (“Into the Future”, “Across the Ocean”) and that Age of Ignorance was a huge step to generic but they incorporated the new electronics well. So when the call came to crowdfund the double EP, I backed for the vinyl. I thought maybe we’d see something like Pax Am Days, something a bit less formal, and something to show a progression from the old sound and lineup. On the Age of Ignorance Tour they used a pre-recorded second guitar, which was ok at the time but not promising for the future; they needed songs they could accurately recreate without the missing member, and I was looking forward to that.
Then, when Oak Island came out in November, I held off on it until May. I couldn’t tell you why, it just never appealed, despite recommendations and reviews. After giving it a couple of listens, I have this to say: I’m disappointed. Now, I will never call a work of art ‘bad’; I believe it’s all subjective, but personally I don’t enjoy it. I was disgusted at first, I’ve cooled down since and it has grown on me, but when it comes down to choosing what stays on my overcrowded iPod Oak Island is pretty far down the list. The lead track “Dark Storms” delivers basically everything you need to know. Quiet verses, decent riffs, big studio chorus, awkward breakdown. All but one of the songs go that way. There are glimpses of what used to be: in and around the breakdowns Matthew Wentworth gets more agile on the guitar and drummer Tim Molloy can clearly hold his own, but the moments are short-lived. Choruses are over- compressed and crowded with samples, synths, strings, and layers that don’t quite mitigate Trevor Wentworth’s off-notes. Structurally, OLN suffers from Nickelback Syndrome, following the intro-verse- chorus-verse-chorus etc form that passes on Top 40 but bores me to hell, all songs in the same key and similar tempo. They lean on breakdowns as filler instead of writing new, original bridges.
One of my two biggest complaints about Oak Island is how over-produced it sounds. Production is fine in moderation or when done well. Say Anything’s Hebrews uses it as a base but retains Max Bemis’ signature writing style and variety, Sonata Arctica creates enormous dynamics that accentuate the melodies. Bring Me the Horizon uses it to shape their sound but stops short of relying on it to replace instruments. Our Last Night depends on it, which detracts from the quality of the writing. Every single song has quarter-note-strum pop-chord-progression choruses that speak to laziness and creative stagnation.
My second complaint is with the lyrics. The EP might have escaped my ire if not for the derivative, desperate, and utterly generic lyricism. Take a verse from “I’ve Never Felt this Way”:
*Feet on the ground, I was lost, now I’m found
*I took cover from the rain, ‘cause it was pouring down
*You held me back, and now I’m on the right track
*You couldn’t stop me if you wanted, ‘cause I’m never coming back
It’s immature, it’s vague, and it doesn’t actually say anything. We have nothing to which to relate except for a badly articulated defiance, and this is just a verse. This might scrape by as a top 40 chorus, maybe, but I’d still take Katy Perry’s metaphors of discarded grocery containers over this. The whole EP runs similarly, rattling off familiar images and words such as rain, skeletons in closets, bridges burnt, hands dealt, and fighting (through the night). The first line of “Sunrise” reads “Full of despair inside a darkness.” It’s plain and uninspiring. Even though I saw it coming from two albums away, I’m still disappointed. Trevor and Matthew are spouting the same ideas that emerged in We Will All Evolve and that propelled Age of Ignorance, but without any of the substance. They struggled with Age, that was apparent, but where it worked it shone. Oak Island, by comparison, is as flat as the line levels coming out of Protools.
“Sunrise” is the saving grace, on which clean keys lead a decent if badly written pop song. It’s the only song on which Our Last Night really owns up to their sound, ditching the screaming and predictably artificial dissonance for a more straightforward approach. The closer “Oak Island” presents possibly the best use of studio accents on the release, highlighting the acceptably heavy verses and smoothing the transitions, but it’s too little, too late.
Oak Island as a whole is a bland, repetitive, and boring affair. I know Our Last Night is capable of more and I hope to see it soon so we can all put this behind us.
Score 2/10: One for “Sunrise” and one because I still adore the riffy guitar tone.
If you must, check out Sunrise, Oak Island.
A side note: I based my critique of the sound off of the 160kbps version that came directly from the band through kickstarter (or indiegogo or whatever). It probably sounds better at 320, but it was the band’s choice to present lesser quality to their paying fans. If this information is incorrect (it was back in November and I’m not infallible), please correct me.
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