Yellow Second - Altitude

Genre rock Publisher Floodgate Records External Links Official Site Floodgate Records

Yellow Second's third offering, Altitude is a well-mixed and well-produced album with plenty of hit appeal. Altitude is youthful, at times damn near boppy, and ready to be strewn like catchy ashes over their stylistically outdated predecessors such as Rob Zombie and Korn.

Overall this is a very solid album musically with moments of sustained singularity that are juxtaposed with some more multifaceted, complex layers. This allows the musicians to display their frankly impressive musical prowess as in the third cut "Forget What You've Heard." This song has an original melody, including styling some innovative guitar pizzicato and perfect, nearly comedic background lyrics. Vocal harmony is a strong suit of this song as well.

Lyrically they are at times quite simply inspired, as in the poetic and merrily wistful first track "Silhouette." Other times they are quite simple, like the disappointing turn to the forgettable they take in the songs "Chance of Sunbreaks" and "Material": "There's a melody in everything you say." Wow. That was moving. "Mulberry" falls into that same mediocre trap with the exception of a more interesting break and a unique, feedbacky ending.

Highlights include "Plume" with compelling, practically smirking keyboards and effectively thin complimentary guitar, and "Hello to Never," an upbeat likable clever little Weezer-inspired lyrical picnic. Big harmony. Toward the end it starts to rock out a bit more; faster, crunchier. This one is a grower and decidedly worth the wait.

Indeed, Yellow Second's Altitude is a CD worth checking out whose biggest obstacle is a bent towards redundancy with respect to paralleling contemporaries like Weezer, Stone Temple Pilots, and Smash Mouth. I'll leave the obvious comparison to Foo Fighters alone with the exception of declaring that I truly prefer my Dave Grohl without the candy sprinkles.