[TuneOTD] Taking Back Sunday - EL PASO

Artist: Taking Back Sunday

Genre: Rock

Location: Long Island, New York, USA

Label Type: Major

Record Label: Warner Bros

Website: http://www.takingbacksunday.com/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/tbsofficial

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/takingbacksunday

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TakingBackSunday

The forthcoming album from American rockers Taking Back Sunday sees the return of former members John Nolan (lead guitar/vocals) and Shaun Cooper (bass). While Adam Lazzara (vocals), Eddie Reyes (rhythm guitar) and Mark O’ Connell (drums) have been constant members since the bands formation in 1999, past members have come and gone, but now they return to the line-up of their first studio album ‘Tell All Your Friends’ in 2002. The new self-titled album is to be the bands 5^th to date and the highly anticipated follow up to 2009’s ‘New Again’, provisionally set for release in the summer of this year, with June 28^th rumoured to be the specific date.

‘El Paso’ is the first song off the new record after it was announced on their website along with a superbly innovative video back in late March. The video displays a mixture of lyrics from the song and tweets from the bands fans off social networking site, Twitter, expressing their excitement and anticipation about the upcoming album. The title of the song has nothing to do with the actual lyrics of the song, but is given the name because the band were in El Paso, Texas when writing this song.

As for the song itself, quite frankly it fails to match the imagination demonstrated in the video. The chorus line ‘You’ll never give what you get’ is ferociously repeated throughout with real passion and hunger, but this only serves to fill the emptiness the song would be left with otherwise. Whilst it lacks the dual vocals and melodies of previous TBS hits, it is probably the heaviest rock song that I can ever remember the band doing, and a possible indication into the direction the Long-Islanders are heading in. However, it could quite possibly indicate a return to their ''emo'' days of the early naughties when they enjoyed their most successful period. Back then the band members were in their late-teens/early twenties, so if they are indeed returning to these musical roots, hopefully they have picked up many different aspects on their musical journey since then and can add these to produce a mature version of the brilliant TBS of old.

The song is a decent start to the bands new era, nothing more, nothing less. However, they’ll have to do a lot better if they want the new album to hit the heights of ‘Louder Now’ (2006) or ‘Where You Want To Be’ (2004). One saving grace may well be the fact that the producer of the new album, Eric Valentine, is the same man who produced ‘Louder Now’, so here’s hoping he can help the band release something as good as that!

You can see the video for ‘El Paso’ below and you can also check out TBS when they begin their UK tour May 9^th as well as on the main stage at Reading and Leeds this summer.

Matthew Evans