Album Review: Yellowcard - Lift A Sail

Having switched labels to Razor & Tie, Yellowcard have stated that Lift A Sail is a rockier record than you’re probably used to hearing from the five-piece. And it’s true – but only in the sense that several tracks on the album start off with a slow-paced melody before blasting off into a seemingly random torrent of electric riffs and hard-hitting drums and then easing off again.

Bands that have been in the game long enough to produce a ninth LP are likely to feel the need to redefine their sound. Unfortunately for Yellowcard the result on Lift A Sail is a schizophrenic record that’s extraordinarily pop-punk in parts and rock-grunge in others. Not to say that variety doesn’t have its place on a record, it just doesn’t work in this instance. Lead single, One Bedroom serves as a good example of this affliction – it begins sweetly and maintains a summer beat before drastically transforming into a spontaneous mass of noise.

MSK is definitely the closest thing on the record to anything like the perfection of Ocean Avenue; that is of course until you realise that as frontman Ryan Key belts out the chorus, he sounds a bit like he’s yodelling “I need you hoo hoo!”

With eight of the 13 tracks pushing four minutes it’s Yellowcard’s longest record since Paper Walls. Listeners who do make it to the end however will be rewarded with closer, California, a warm acoustic ballad and probably the best song on the album.