{"id":42097,"date":"2010-09-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/we-are-an-empire-my-dear\/"},"modified":"2010-09-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-03T00:00:00","slug":"we-are-an-empire-my-dear","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/we-are-an-empire-my-dear\/","title":{"rendered":"We Are An Empire, My Dear"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a junior in college, but a prime source of my new music lately has been from episodes of Degrassi<\/i>, the famed Canadian teen drama that\u2019s been airing since the \u201880s. Along with launching the career of rising rapper Drake, Degrassi has also been stepping up its game in culling some great indie bands to soundtrack its episodes, many of them repping the Great White North. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

In-Flight Safety (hailing from Halifax, Novia Scotia) lent their track \u201cModel Homes,\u201d from 2009\u2019s We Are An Empire, My Dear, <\/i>and while it did well to capture an evocative scene in the show, it\u2019s also just an excellent song. Lead singer John Mullane\u2019s vocals are heartfelt and soaring, the harmonies sound perfectly natural, and the instrumentation is lushly adorned with violin and glimmering guitars. Plus, there are just some cool lines that lift this track out of being just palatable pop-rock: \u201cSo can you smell these eyes burn? \/ Can you feel it in your bones?\u201d\u00a0 and the chorus \u201cAnd if it leaves a bad taste \/ You need to wash it down \/ And if you build a model home \/ Just burn it to the ground.\u201d<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Being a talented foursome with a penchant for sweeping, heart-string-tugging tunes inevitably brings up the Coldplay or Keane comparison, and there are some similarities. But don\u2019t write these guys off just because you\u2019ve gotten Coldplay-ed out. There\u2019s more of a subtlety to In-Flight Safety, and that lack of bombast for the sake of it adds to a sense of genuineness. Plus, this isn\u2019t just a bunch of simpering love ballads created to draw girls; the lyrics here, instead, often focus on a feeling of isolation and alienation, of the trepidation that comes with risking new relationships. The gorgeous array of instruments and crisp production adds in some contrasting beauty, but the underlying tension is still there.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Take \u201cBig White Elephant,\u201d which is full of jangling beats and Mullane\u2019s clean falsetto, but which repeats the line \u201cAll eyes \/ Always down \/ Wake up \/ Don\u2019t you dare to let us down\u201d in a sort of hypnotic lull. Or \u201cCrash\/Land\u201d with its strong opening riff and energetic tempo, a triumphant ode to love but also perhaps to dissolution: \u201cWe\u2019ll hold our hands as we crash-land into the sea \/ we\u2019ll ride it down into the ground, just you and me.\u201d <\/o:p><\/p>\n

The only thing that dogs We Are An Empire, My Dear <\/i>is a sense of sameness \u2013 while all the tracks are individually well put together, sonically stunning and sentimental, taken in one big chunk, there isn\u2019t enough variation. In-Flight Safety is obviously gifted at creating songs that rise up towards the rafters, but they aren\u2019t quite all anthems yet. What they do best, however, is manage to infuse their songs \u2013 which are concentrated on themes of destruction and isolation \u2013 with warmth and personality, upping the urgency of this material and ensuring that it\u2019s wholly listenable also.<\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":30434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8619],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-42097","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-in-flight-safety","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42097"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}