Much like Drive-Thru Records during the late 90’s to early 00’s, the current Pure Noise roster makes for pretty impressive reading, with some of pop-punk’s current stars calling it home. Hoping to make their way to the top of the list and dethrone the likes of State Champs and The Story So Far in the process is Seaway.
You might expect a song called ‘Slam’ to live up to its title and immediately drop some huge and heavy riffs but the underwhelming and toned down intro of vocals and guitar suggest otherwise. ‘Slam’ does soon move into the typical set-up of gang vocals, harmonies, and bouncy riffs but it’s short length stops the ideas developing into a decent song. ‘Best Mistake’ is an immediate improvement musically with a tighter structure and sing-along chorus, but it’s the lyrics that let it down, with “you could be my best mistake that I’ve been dying to make” being as deep as things get.
The often self-explanatory song titles give an insight into what to expect from the rest of ‘Colour Blind’. Tracks such as ‘Freak’ and ‘Still Weird’ come straight from a pop-punk song name generator and their themes of individuality and isolation have also been done to death. It’s easy enough to tackle a well-worn theme in a new way with interesting lyrics or a change of perspective but unfortunately Seaway fail to do so, instead pairing underwhelming lyrics with unmemorable by-numbers riffs on both songs.
There are times however when Seaway get the formula absolutely spot on and the result is some fantastic songs. ‘Stubborn Love’ slows things down a bit and features some strong harmonies as well as a thoughtfulness that is often missing elsewhere, whereas ‘Big Deal’ perfectly captures the carefree mood of pop-punk and is one of the best songs on the album.‘Turn Me Away’ also gets the formula right with the snaking guitar line in particular helping set it apart.
However it’s a shame that it’s only really on ‘Airhead’ that there’s any noticeable hint of passion in the vocals, but once again the lyrics let it down. There’s no denying that “being lonely is different than being alone, like when you call and nobody picks up the phone” is easy to sing along to, but it’s pretty embarrassing to do so.
Seaway’s début album ‘Hoser’ was a fun but conventional listen and ‘Colour Blind’ isn’t much different. With bands such as The Wonder Years having broken down the boundaries of pop-punk and State Champs showing the incredible results you can get whilst sticking closer to what’s expected, Seaway fall away anonymously. For every hit such as ‘Best Mistake’ or ‘Big Deal’ there’s forgettable half-efforts such as ‘The Day She Left’ and ‘Goon’. The initial impression was of an album low on originality and made to fit a genre, and despite a few bright moments it ends up being a lasting one too.
CHRIS HILSON