Anberlin is a band that tends to leave me conflicted in terms of what I want them to do next. After hearing their debut album, Blueprints for the Black Market, I wondered if they had anything else up their sleeve but wall-to-wall rockers. It's a formula that they do so well - take some mysteriously dark, conflict-laden lyrics, overlay an irresistibly pop melody and some mild 80's influences against the thick bed of guitars and drums, and whip into all into a streamlined and formidable signature sound that plays like a more articulate Jimmy Eat World with new wave haircuts. And yet part of me wants these guys to experiment. Their second album, Never Take Friendship Personal, took that formula that worked so well and duplicated it almost to a fault - there were some harsher screams and shouts here, a riveting drawn-out finale, and an actual ballad that didn't take the typical "power ballad" route to create something genuinely memorable, but for the most part, it was Blueprints 2.0. How much change should be expected of an artist who already did an excellent job the first time out? Should all serious rock bands have to go through a "difficult indie-art-rock-slow-burner" phase and then return to their "glory days" in order to give everyone a chance to respect them? Or can they just keep doing what they do best, with a few small experiments thrown in on the side? Anberlin seems to think so on their third album, Cities, which takes a few daring turns that you might not fully notice or appreciate at first, but mostly sticks to the core sound that Anberlin fans know and love.

I might just go out on a limb and say that Cities is the group's best album. It took a lot of hindsight to realize that Never Take Friendship Personal beat out Blueprints by a matter of small degrees, so it might be premature to call Cities their best just because they tried a little more "different stuff" on this one. Where it becomes more apparent to me isn't in the obviously noticeable experiments - "Hey, they have a mellow song with strings!", or "Hey, check out that 9-minute finale with the children's choir!" - but rather, the way that the hearty sound of their straight-ahead rockers has become a little bit more complex and accomplished in a way that might get taken for granted on first pass. Take a closer listen to the percussion and the way that it's patterned, or the intricacy in the overlapping vocals, or the interplay between the guitars and synthesizers. You'd never listen to a song and go "What the heck, this isn't Anberlin!", but these elements are woven together more tightly and compellingly than they were on Blueprints (and that album already had kick-butt riffs and guitar solos aplenty). These songs are simply more well thought out, without being noticeably overwrought in any way. Give yourself enough time to get over the brief reminders of past songs, and you'll realize that unlike past albums, there's nothing here that blends into the background - no song that becomes obsolete due to the similar and superior songs adjacent to it. Solid momentum and uniquely memorable rock songs are tough to come by on most rock albums, so to me, this is cause for rejoicing.

There's a flip side, though - and this may be the one thing that keeps Cities from rising to 5-star levels of critical acclaim for me. I don't think there's any one song that's so awesome that it immediately jumps out as my favorite track on the album. That's good in a sense, because it means the album is almost uniformly strong (and if you don't count the bonus tracks on the Special Edition, there's nothing embarrassing going on in the lyrics department that would significantly drag down any individual song), but it another sense, it's frustrating, because I can't point to a song and say, "That's the next 'Readyfuels' or the next 'Feel Good Drag' or what have you". The average over a collection of really good songs equals a really good rating, with nothing to tip the scales in the direction of pure excellence. That's more likely a matter of individual opinion than anything else, so I'd fully expect to see several 5-star reviews of this album even if I'm not giving it quite that much credit.

(NOTE: I changed my mind since first writing the above paragraph, hence the 5-star rating I currently have assigned. Several songs really are that good - it just took a little more time for me to realize that.)

Any way you slice it, Cities is an exhilarating album - the closure of a trilogy of sorts that has been explained by the band as the first album being "Man vs. nature", the second album being "Man vs. man", and this album being "Man vs. self". Some of Anberlin's darkest lyrics (occasionally depressing, but by no means disturbing) show up here, as do some of its most transparent cries for God's help and some of its most engaging love songs, just to break up the sonically heavy navel-gazing a little bit. I think it's a stellar mixture.

(Debut)
The record starts with a trembling guitar intro, hinting at the melody of the song soon to follow, giving you the feel that you're entering a big city thanks to the sounds of ambulance sirens and so forth in the background. (I said it about The Flaming Lips and I'll say it here - there oughta be a law against putting sounds on music CDs that could confuse drivers!)

Godspeed
Kill yourself slowly over time
Fashion statement suicide
She's still asleep in a Chelsea hotel
Bad turns to worse, and the worst turns into hell...
As pointless as the intro track may seem (it didn't really need to be a separate track), it leads into a slamming rocker that just makes you want to pump your fist in the air with its vigorous "Hey! Hey!"s and "Whoa-oa-oa-oa!"s very neatly filling in the gaps in Stephen Christian's outstanding vocal performance. It's a blessing and a curse that this guy has the diligence to do pretty much all of the backup vocals as well as the lead in the studio - the lyrics are very tightly packed as a result, with the end of one line often overlapping with the beginning of the next, and it gives the song extra urgency when it catapults forward with the massive chorus which declares, "They lied when they said the good die young!" He varies between a hushed and slightly dangerous tone, a near-scream in some of the more urgent spots, a shout, and a whisper as the band makes its way through this catchy crash course of a song, propelled by the quick-fingered riffing of Joey Milligan (complete with the first of a few blistering solos) and the thunderous drum fills of Nate Young. The lyrics seem to deal with a fear of moving on from one's youth, arising from a need to dispel the myth that it's better to flash brightly and then burn out rather than live a long life and experience growing old. Not wanting to leave one's childhood fantasies is a rather bad excuse for tragic suicide or disappearing into a drug-induced oblivion, isn't it?

Adelaide
You're repeating me lines that you think I wanna hear
But I don't wanna hear anymore
As if sorry is any consolation
For what it's worth, you're stringing me along...
I love how Anberlin manages to come up with peppy little songs that seem on the surface to be romantic, while revealing on a deeper level that they're really about some girl who has a poisonous personality, or was just a jerk to one of the guys in the band or something. (U2 was good at that sort of thing during their more cynical phase.) Not content to just deliver a straightforward rhythm for such a poppy song, Nathan Young really makes this song's chorus stand out, hitting hard on the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th beats out of eight while the name "Adelaide" rings out with the syllables on 1, 3, and 5. The syncopation is beautiful. This "Adelaide" girl probably had her name changed to the Australian city of her origin for her own protection, but whoever she was, she was apparently into leading a guy on without intending to ever give him anything lasting. I hate it when people do that!

A Whisper and a Clamor
I grow tired of writing songs
While people listen but never hear
What's really going on now
Tell me what's so wrong now...
Keeping the pace quick and the lyrics bitingly clever, this track seems to be directed at the expectations of Anberlin's Christian audience with its rallying cry of "Clap your hands, all ye children", which obliquely references one of the Psalms. It seems to be about the demand of that segment of the crowd to deliver upbeat, uplifting, and catchy singles for crowds to jump around and sing along to, when that very same crowd isn't really willing to engage the contents of a song deeply and wrestle with what's going. Anberlin has always been one of the "darker" bands associated in any way with "Christian rock", so it's no surprise that their fan base has tended more mainstream recently, but Stephen seems to be expressing a bit of frustration here with an audience who only wants religious cliches thrown at them, and is unwilling to find some of the harder-to-face truths that are woven into this band's lyrics. In that sense, I'm getting a bit of a Juliana Theory feel from the band (and it's not the first time on this record that I feel this way), but Anberlin tends to pull off this sort of thing with a little bit less self-consciousness and less overt sneering at their own audience. I could be totally wrong about the meaning, but oh well, the song is the third straight solid rocker in a row, and it ends with a beautifully executed acoustic guitar outro.

The Unwinding Cable Car
This is the correlation of salvation and love
Don't drop your arms, I'll guard your heart
With quiet words I'll lead you in...
Here's one of those moments where I really love Anberlin's affinity for complicated song titles that reference something more specific and unique to the song than just an overall concept like "Salvation and Love", which is really what the song is all about. It's a surprisingly gentle song for early in the album - the momentum almost seems to be broken at first when we've got little other than Joey Milligan and rhythm guitarist Nathan Strayer picking and strumming away on their acoustic guitars with nothing else anchoring the rhythm, but once the momentum picks up midway through when the drums break in and give the song more of a confident march, it actually makes sense that they waited this long for the payoff. Stephen sings in his most dulcet tones, creating a more organic cousin to the lovely but sad "(The Symphony of) Blase" from the previous album. I really love that when these guys play acoustic, they don't just settle for a generic coffeehouse strum. Stephen is singing to a distressed friend who is going through a bit of a spiritual crisis, and it's here that his words are a little clearer, but still quite eloquent, as he describes wanting to bring her to a more confident place of faith. See, Christian audience? They haven't abandoned the idea of writing songs about faith; it's just that they're multi-faceted and you need to have some patience, and they'll come full circle.

There Is No Mathematics to Love and Loss
There is algebra in gasoline
Burning pictures, pages and photographs
Fire can make a conscience clean
Strike the match, we'll see...
There's a lot of burning going on in this song - references to gasoline and matches, and an overall feeling of something that was once good going up in flames. The rhythm is a furious, pumping one, but also extremely danceable - even in their darkest moods, this band can't help but bring in the most massive hooks. Stephen's doing a whole lot of echoing himself as he sings here (I can't help but wonder if some of these songs are going to suffer live because nobody else in the band appears to be doing BGV's), and because of that it's easy to miss one of the song's most cutting lines, which sneaks up behind the main "Have you ever heard a word?" refrain: "Rather be lonely in love, than alive with you and dead." Sounds like this one's about a cold, calculated loss - a person has summed up their chances of happiness with someone when their relationship has come to a crossroads, and is wisely deciding that dealing with the pain of a breakup now is better than not addressing the problem and dragging out their misery forever due to fear of being alone.

Hello Alone
Depression is the unholy ghost
In the coastal towns up ahead
Though I know a thousand names
I see my only friend...
This song is where the album starts to take a darker turn, into an exploration of loneliness that permeates most of its back half. As far as the rockers go on Cities, I tend to see this as one of the lesser ones, but I still think it's a pretty decent song, which should clue you in to how strong I think this record is overall. The song's got a good setup, apparently describing a journey to "where the interstate ends, in coastal towns like this" that was apparently aided by hitchhiking, ending up in a place where he knows nobody and has no money left even for a motel room. It's probably a metaphor for the loneliness felt after the breakup in the previous song, but I think the way that it's summed up in the chorus is a bit gimmicky: "Is anybody out there? Hello, hello?" later turns into, "Is anybody out there alone, alone?", hence the title of the song. The trick is that the ear can't immediately differentiate between "Hello" and "Alone". It's kind of an awkward trick to play, plus "Is anybody out there?" is kind of a cliché thing to say in the midst of an otherwise much more descriptive song. But it's still a lot of fun to sing along with, and Stephen's screams of "Do they care at all?" in the bridge are well-timed.

Alexithymia
Addictions fill the table where the family used to sit
And conversate, conversate to the sounds
To the sounds of a record player
With its jumping needle and the lights that grow dim over time...
Now they're getting all clinical on us with the song titling. Actually, the title refers to a psychological condition involving an inability to properly identify or articulate one's own emotions. This sort of numb, gray state where one can only remember what it used to be like when they were once able to feel is brilliantly reflected in the song's intro, which is a synthesis of Nathan's drumming and some programmed rhythmic stuff. (There's a neat little snippet of Nathan and one of the other guys working out this part in the studio on the bonus DVD.) There's a definite descent into self here - the person is in the company of others, even waking up beside a loved one and recognizing the sun that shines into their bedroom, but they no longer talk about it or allow themselves to experience the simple joys - there's an unidentifiable barrier there. The chorus states again and again: "With downcast eyes, there's more to living than being alive", which is kind of a Switchfoot-esque thing to say, but here I don't mind that the chorus resolves to such a simple statement. That's probably because I know what it feels like (or rather, doesn't feel like) to be in such a state and realize that you're breathing and your basic systems are functioning, but you've kind of disengaged the world around you. It's largely because of that aspect that this song stands out as one of my favorites on the album - though the tasty "bending" guitar solo in the middle definitely helps to catapult this one forward towards greatness.

Reclusion
There's an art in seclusion, production in depression
If a stranger turns up missing, this song is my confession...
Anberlin gets really 80's-sounding and synth-happy here - that's an influence that always lurks right underneath their music but usually doesn't flaunt itself (in other words, they're not The Killers). I don't mind it at all, since the dark undercurrent of heavy guitar is still hard at work - the electronic stuff seems to fighting with it, like a virus that needs to be eradicated. This song is about a sickness of sorts, in keeping with that musical theme - it's quite possible Anberlin's darkest moment, as Stephen confesses how coldly he can be tempted to regard his fellow human being at times, knowing his ability to assassinate their character with mere words: "There's someone inside me that softly kills everyone around. They don't know they're dead to me cause intent never makes a sound." It's a war between good and bad selves, as he indicts these character flaws in the chorus: "You're sick, sick as all the secrets that you deny. Sins like skeletons are so very hard to hide."

Inevitable
Do you remember when we were just kids
And cardboard boxes took us miles from what we would miss
Schoolyard conversations taken to heart
And laughter took the place of everything we knew we were not...
This gentle track (What? More than one ballad on an Anberlin record) seems almost dropped in from another universe at this point, though that's not an unwelcome intrusion. My wife once pointed out that Anberlin didn't really have any romantic songs, and she was right until this one came along (though I think "Autobahn" wasn't a bad try). It's a simpler acoustic pick-and-strum first, but what's beautiful is that at certain points, a violin section makes a guest appearance and adds its own beautiful layer of string plucking. The good self has taken over, and has gone back to the girl he dumped after taking a long, hard look at himself, and now he wants to "Break every clock, the hands of time could never move again" - he wants things to be the way they once were. In one sense it's so corny, but there's a part of me that totally melts when he concludes the chorus with this devastatingly charming line: "I want to be your last first kiss." Again, the band pulls the trick of not bringing in drums until about halfway through the songs, and when they do, it's actually four drums at once, a group of guys standing around in a circle (thanks again, bonus DVD!) and pounding out a strong but sensitive rhythm to woo her back. Some people might say it's cliché, but even in doing the simple love song, they threw in some unexpected elements, so I've got to give the band a lot of credit for this one. Deon Rexroat even starts it off with the bass, which is not usually the type of instrument you'd lead off a sensitive ballad with.

Dismantle. Repair.
I am the patron saint of lost causes
A fraction of who I once believed
Change, only a matter of time
Opinions I would try and rewrite...
Now comes the hard part of reconciliation: you have to want to change if you want that special someone you dumped to take you back. Stephen opens this song quietly, over simple, light notes from Joey's electric guitar, but we can all see the big crash where the whole band joins in coming miles away on this one, as another great riff pops up just in time for the pre-chorus... but then the band settles back into another verse, this time progressing forward with a little more rhythmic trickery and drum fills courtesy of Nate Young. By the time the chorus finally shows up (and it's another big, fast one that would leave Stephen breathless if he was actually singing all of these parts in one take), it's hard not to be emotionally drawn into this process of healing that he's going through with this girl. It's not the most gentle one - he's bearing his soul and she's basically taking him apart and pointing out where he needs to shape up or ship out, but those incisive observations are what he knows he needs - someone who will cut through the B.S. and help him be a better man. That's the dismantling and repairing going on here, I guess. The song culminates with that relentless chorus that just won't quit - you think he's winding down and he goes for another few rounds, and it's just so easy to get swept away in the movement of it.

(*Fin)
Widows and orphans aren't hard to find
They're home missing daddy who's saving the abandoned tonight
Wish your drinking would hurry and kill you
Sympathy's better than having to tell you the truth...
Here the "big finale" provided by the previous track bleeds into one final piece, which we'd expect to be an instrumental outro just like the first track was an intro, but - surprise! - an acoustic riff in 3/4 time picks up and an epic closing track is slowly coming together before our very eyes (well, actually ears). Here Stephen begins to reach outward, telling tales of other people who are leading seemingly hopeless lives, and even though the things being said about these people are a bit harsh, he seems to be indicating that they're kindred spirits when he comes around to his conclusion - "I am the patron saint of lost causes." (This line was actually used once in the previous song, so it's nice to see the theme expanded upon here.) In this difficult moment of identifying with these other losers, he's able to differentiate between messed-up people and the God they claim to believe in - they might threaten to sully God's reputation on earth, but still he has faith that God isn't through with these people yet. And though you'd think this would be about the last thing that would work in an Anberlin song, a chorus of youthful voices actually breaks in as the song beings to transform into a sky-high rock jam session - eagerly they sing again and again, "Patron saint, are we all lost like you?" The whole band really gets to strut their stuff as the song winds on and on, well past the five minute mark, and even when the spirited chorus is through and everything seems to coming to a contemplative rest, the tempo slows a bit and Stephen returns for a lonely, melodramatic coda with clattering percussion in the background. This might be the point where the song gets a bit too over-the-top for its own good - he's coming close to sounding like Brett Detar from The Juliana Theory, but then I kind of liked it when TJT didn't care how over-the-top they were, so maybe that's OK. In any event, the fact that it's a nine-minute finale will test the patience of some, and Anberlin would lose something if they tried to do epics like this all the time, but they've done a bang-up job with this one, so it never really feels as long as it truly is.

If you bought the special edition of the album like I did, then you get a few bonus songs and a making-of DVD shot in black-and-white (seriously, I think this band abhors actual colors), which is interesting to watch once as it gives insights into the minute details of how a few of these songs were created and layered in the studio, but doesn't really make you feel eager to watch it again any time soon. Here are my thoughts on the bonus songs:

Uncanny
Trains to Tokyo, staring out windows
A place we've never been, while soundtracks play in backgrounds...
This is a more joyous and simple song, a rocker than rings out with glee when describing an opportunity to travel the world with a lover. It's a nice counterpoint to the whole "I'm a hard-working band member out on the road and I miss my baby" theme that so many rock bands go far - he just said the heck with it and brought her along, apparently. But while the idea of the song is fun, the repetitive "Anywhere, anywhere" and "Anything, anything" in the chorus do start to grate after a few minutes. There's an extremely catchy and bouncy bridge of "Doo-doo-doo"s in the center, which is probably the song's most memorable element. Other than that, I'm not all that drawn to it most of the time.

There Is a Light that Never Goes Out
Driving in your car
Oh, please don't drive me home
Because it's not my home
It's their home, and I'm welcome no more...
OK, so if you're a fan of The Smiths or Morrissey, you might want to skip this paragraph in which I trash one of their songs. Anberlin decided to cover two of their 80's influences at the end here, and I can totally see how the dark shades of the lyrics combined with the laid-back acoustic pop melody might have played a major role in Anberlin's development, but seriously? This song sucks. It's all about being a teenage reject whose parents don't even like you and wanting some girl to drive you to any old random place so you can make out in your car, and basically having a death wish. Seriously, they actually say, "If a ten-ton truck kills the both of us, to die by your side, the pleasure, the privilege is mine." Great, let's advocate being suicidal. Aside from the lyrics being majorly irritating, the percussion is all tinny and muffled and the whole thing just sounds so plain. Stephen can't decide whether he's singing or yawning. Some of that may be this way in the original version, for all I know, but given that this is the worst thing Anberlin has recorded so far, I don't care to compare notes by listening to the other version.

The Promise
Sometimes if I shout, it's not what's intended
These words just come out with no gripe to bear...
Now I'm going to take Anberlin's cover of a much more lightweight song, a piece of total one-hit-wonder 80's fluff, and say that it's actually pretty good. I'm prepared for the stoning. This is a synth-oriented cover of a song by the band When in Rome (and not Depeche Mode, as some have cited it, but being fairly ignorant about Depeche Mode, I see how one could make that mistake). It's got these bubbling and buzzing keyboard effects and little chopped up bits of electric guitar, and a beautiful, crystalline acoustic guitar melody that runs through it, giving the song more of a human touch. It's about as basic as love songs get, lyrically speaking - he's promising a girl he'll do pretty much anything to make her fall for him and stay in love with him, yada yada yada. The 80's weren't a great time for lyrically deep pop hits, though neither is our modern age, so whatever. It's a fun song with one of those choruses that just comes cascading down and puts a smile on your face. It wouldn't have fit into the album very well (none of these bonus tracks would), but since "There Is a Light" pretty much cancels out the value of having "Uncanny" on the CD, this track at least makes the special edition a little more worthwhile. (It's also been pointed out to me that the original version of this song is featured in the film Napoleon Dynamite, which I saw for the first time recently but it didn't register with me that it was the same song. So it'll bring back memories if you're fond of that film.)

Well, that's a wrap. Cities by Anberlin. Great album, mildly interesting bonus oddities, overall the best collection of songs I've heard thus far in 2007. (The year's still young, though.) Go get it. You won't regret it if you liked the band at all in the past.

(Incidentally, my wife and I adopted a cat recently and my wife decided to name her Anberlin. I don't even know that she likes the band that much, but she thought the name was cool, and of course I concur. Given that it was originally a name Stephen wanted to give to a daughter someday, and he later changed his mind after the band took off, I figured it wouldn't hurt for us to put it to good use. The cat is black and white, and quite moody, so it's appropriate.)

ALBUM WORTH:
(Debut) $0
Godspeed $2
Adelaide $1.50
A Whisper and a Clamor $1.50
The Unwinding Cable Car $2
There Is No Mathematics to Love and Loss $1.50
Hello Alone $1
Alexithymia $1.50
Reclusion $1
Inevitable $1.50
Dismantle. Repair. $2
Fin $1.50
TOTAL (Regular Edition): $17
Uncanny $.50
There Is a Light that Never Goes Out -$.50
The Promise $1
Bonus DVD $1
TOTAL (Special Edition): $19

Band Members:
Stephen Christian: Lead vocals
Joseph Milligan: Lead guitar, backing vocals
Deon Rexroat: Bass
Nathan Strayer: Guitar (left after recording this album, replaced by Christian McAlhaney)
Nathan Young: Drums

Websites:
http://www.anberlin.com
http://www.myspace.com/anberlin

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Driving