Soul Asylum - Delayed Reaction
Alternative
429 Records
Posted 10/13/13 11:53 PM ET
Soul Asylum's 2012 album Delayed Reaction, their first new album since 2006's The Silver Lining, brings the band to new heights of their game. Still making beauty from melancholy, Soul Asylum tops themselves perpetually within these ten songs; this is what alternative rock should sound like. Best known for songs like "Runaway Train", Delayed Reaction shows the bands harder side while perfecting their alt ballads on a new level, both giving greater detail to the mold they are known as well as breaking it in several ways... well for those that have only listened to their singles that have received radio play. I suppose you could call me a casual fan even though "Somebody to Shove" is one of my all time favorite songs, and Delayed Reaction was a great eye opener for this reviewer as to what Soul Asylum is capable of beyond the greatness of what came from their early-mid 90's hit maker album Grave Dancers Union and Let Your Dim Light Shine.
Overall tone and pacing of Delayed Reaction fits the outline of most 90's alternative albums, a welcome reminder/refresher on when alternative rock was alternative and, not to sound like a hipster, so mainstream. Alternative hasn't been alternative in about twelve or so years and it is damn good to be reminded of when it was a trailblazing genre of music instead of the mass radio play friendly, corporate manufactured, paint by numbers wannabe alt rock that's closer to pop than anything else that is so prevalent today. Forgoing the rest of the usual soapbox speech about the evils of uninspired and unoriginal sell out auto-tuned odes to self importance that sell today, Soul Asylum has tapped into the place in all of us that they are named after and brought out emotions, musings, and pain that come from deep within and give them all tangible voice in their lyrics. And it is good.
The current line up plays together as though they have been together since the beginning, sure Pirner's voice has changed a little over the years, but it's a good change and lends more gravitas to the music.
Track Listing:
- Gravity
- Into The Light (breaking horses)
- The Streets
- By The Way
- Pipe Dream
- Let's All Kill Each Other
- Cruel Intentions
- The Juice
- Take Manhattan
- I Should've Stayed In Bed