The best new CDs from young rockers

I love it when I hear a new album by a successful band and find out that they have not been sitting on their laurels. That means the CD has new things for us to admire, and shows that the group made some effort to give buyers something they will enjoy. Maybe even if only just to show that they had been working on their craft in order to come up with something better or at least different from before.

That is how I see Lonely Road, the latest from The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. Don’t You Fake It, its first release, was good but this one shows how much these rockers from Florida have improved. Truth to tell the band has extended its reach with the latest and now shows how willing the band is to take its sound to new places. And in this case, I guess the band also took some risks because those new sounds in this CD might not be what its fans expect from Red Jumpsuit Apparatus.

Lonely Road and You Better Pray rock hard and remind me of a young Metallica. All sweeping music and fantastic guitar work. These songs sound like the natural progression from the first album. But then there are also Step Right Up, Pull Me Back, Represent, Pen and Paper and Believe which are all fine pop/rock tunes. And that is what I am worried about. Catchy and mellower than usual, these are not what fans of The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus might want to get from the band. But on the other hand, if being commercial is what counts and you want songs that kids everywhere can sing, then this one is a big winner.

Which Bitch? by The View. I missed the first CD titled Hats Off to the Buskers so I heard these guys from Scotland for the first time with this one. And I have to say that this is one more proof that Brit bands do have this unique flair for rock music, a fearlessness that keeps them from being beholden to tradition. The View is very good. Its melodies have this very commercial sparkle that makes the loud rockers such fun to listen to. And loud or soft, fast or slow or whatever, melody is what still counts in the music business.

That is not all these guys do. They also like to experiment and do provide nice surprises in the album. Best among these is having an orchestra play in Distant Doubloon and guesting hot young tenor Pablo Nutini in Covers. Their other important asset is Kyle Falconer. You know how much a rock band needs a good vocalist in order to excel and Falconer is The View’s key to becoming great. He can be sweet and whispery one moment, then wail you to hell in the next. And he sounds good every time. Best tracks here are 5Rebeccas, Shockhorror, Temptation Dice and Covers.

There is also more pop-rock than plain rock in When the World Comes Down the latest by The All American Rejects (AAR). And there is really no reason to ever turn this album into a reject. Truth to tell this CD must be one of the best rockers in the stores right now and one that no pop-rock fan should pass up. Take note that the AAR is one of the biggest young bands in the world today. But in spite of that, AAR still made sure this new album would be another excellent job.

Now what makes this CD a must is the way the AAR took on different styles of rock music and then turned them into its own. You want acoustic? There is Mona Lisa which is also known as When the World Comes Down. You want folksy? There is Wind Blows. What about rock, sprawling and inspirational? There is Breakin’. You want something wild and incessant? Then check out Real World. And so on. These guys’ next album can go deeper into any of those styles and what makes the thought exciting is that at this point, we have no idea into which one.