Do you ever have a CD that's enjoyable to listen to, but really difficult to write a review of? Or a CD that seems like a letdown compared to your expectations, but that you have to admit you still kinda like? Falling Up's sophomore album, Dawn Escapes, is one of those for me.

I was quite excited about Falling Up's first album, Crashings, released in 2004. These Oregon kids, with their so-called "pash rock" mixture of zippy guitar rock, slight rap overtones, glistening keyboards and DJ effects, boy band harmonies, esoteric lyrics, and song titles that seemed to go better with other songs on the album, ended up being my favorite new artist of that year. They had the ideal driving album - a ton of upbeat songs that all but collided into one another while maintaining their own stylistic or melodic identity, for the most part. If anything, the band's biggest weakness was that they tried too many things at once on songs like "Jackson Five". But then, they'd turn around and knock me over with a "Bittersweet" or an "Ambience", or dazzle me with something like "Arafax Deep". These guys seemed intelligent, and youth-friendly at the same time. I figured that they had a lot of promise.

Then came the rushed second album. Releasing about a year and half after their first, Dawn Escapes seems like a logical step for the band - more of the same keyboard and synth-washed rock sound, a newer emphasis on piano in several places, and more of an attempt at making a cohesive album rather than throwing styles at the wall and seeing what sticks. It should be one of those albums that gets hailed as a move toward artistic maturity - right? Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work out that way for Falling Up. While the sound is well-polished and energetic throughout, and there are one or two interesting diversions that don't sound like the songs on Crashings, it seems that these guys have wound up in a bit of a holding pattern. Once they've hooked you by being incredibly catchy while not sounding exactly like a bunch of other bands currently flooding the radio waves, they have a bit of trouble keeping your attention, and why? It's because they then repeat the process... over and over and over again. Whatever seemed to work within the first few tracks becomes really tired and played out by album's end. And as much as you loved the anthemic, fast-paced, riff-driven goodness at the beginning, you'll be wishing for something slower, or something that doesn't repeat the same lines of text again and again, or that in some way distinguishes itself from eight or nine of the other tracks on a 12-track album. (It's a problem similar to that of Linkin Park, though there's no rapping or tortured screaming here.)

But OK, so the band has settled into a more homogenous approach that makes it difficult to appreciate the individual songs. Do they still sound good? Of course they do. And do they still write good lyrics, the kind that don't preach at the listener, but that evoke moods and fragments of the experiences a Christian believer goes through? Sure. It's just harder for those lyrics to stand out in my mind this time around, what with so many repetitive choruses making it more difficult to care what's being said. Hit me with one short but poetic mantra that you repeat a few times, and I'll think it's important enough to dig into the meaning if the words that you didn't repeat over and over (i.e. the verses and bridge). Do that to me for most of an album, and unless your lyrics are weird to the point of being absurdly amusing (which Falling Up's lyrics aren't), and I'll probably tune out. I hate to tune out on a band that I had such giddy excitement for just a short time ago, but once I've tasted diversity in a band's repertoire, I find it hard to settle for what seems to be a routine exercise.

Still, much of Dawn Escapes is salvageable. None of these songs are bad - there are just the ones I notice (which, understandably, are mostly in the first half), and the ones I don't, no matter how hard I try. It's those "unnoticeables" that make such an album so difficult to review, because I have to go back and try to remember the details of those songs and figure out why I keep forgetting about them. I'll take a few failed experiments in place of eight permutations of the same old format any day, but nevertheless, I'll dig in and see if I can find anything that I previously missed as I cover this album front to back for you, the potential buyer.

Searchlights
The secrets in the wind
The rumors now begin
You want to hear the silence
You want the quiet sirens...
I will say that Falling Up knows how to draw the listener into an album. While not as spectacular of an opening as "Bittersweet", this song really sets the mood with its smooth wash of synthesizers and the vague hint of a human voice at the beginning, before a chunky programmed beat and a stuttering guitar riff break in. The lyrics are typically enigmatic, describing a plan for either a prison break or espionage against a city in the verses - take your pick. The lyrics here range from visually descriptive ("searchlights in every corner") to strangely cliché ("like 'I love you' when you're gone") to downright menacing ("I swear we'll flood your city, no choice, it's what you're getting" - gee, I hope nobody in New Orleans is listening.) This is all framed in a simple chorus that invites the listener, "If you want it, then you'll see it, let me know", with that refrain of "Let me know" being the main lyrical hook to the song as it repeats at the end of each different line. The song is based on a Bible verse which asks us to "Taste and see that the Lord is good", so I'm guessing that they're setting up a theme of escaping from some sort of previous captivity and discovering new life as a Christian here.

Exhibition
Feel this now, the healing starts
Your motion, but you're home alone
You are moving past your home, so fix your thoughts
You're letting go of all you used to know
And now his blood will flow...
I like the soft, rolling piano that opens this song. (You'll hear that tactic a few times on this album.) In some ways, the band reminds me of a more energetic Sleeping at Last on this one. Jessy Ribordy's sometimes edgy and nasal lead vocals mesh well with the other guys' harmonies on this one, bringing out that "boy band" aspect I mentioned earlier, but just a little bit (it isn't a bad thing). The more typical heavy power chords take over for the chorus (as they do in most songs), but I don't mind the juxtaposition between that and the keyboard notes that trickle throughout the verses. Jessy keeps coming back to a chorus that proclaims, "While you're sleeping, you know I have escaped/While you're sleeping, you know I've been erased", which makes another hint at the album's title (should it be interpreted as the dawn escaping from night, or as many people's escapes taking place at dawn?), as well as the theme of a person's identity being erased, which will pop up again later. The song might not stand out on its own so much as an amazing piece of work, but it keeps the momentum going nicely from track 1 and builds on the hint of a storyline that's been established thus far, right up until it does a sort of warped fade into the distance.

Flights
He leaves this light
This sparkle's broken inside you
I swear, it hides
Inside it's moving its way through...
Keeping more or less the same rhythm as the first two songs, this short number features more of an upfront guitar attack, with the piano gently plinking along and some synthetic bass and guitar harmonics adding a spacey effect during the verses. Here is where we first notice how repetitive the choruses can be, as this song's chorus doesn't vary much from its initial statement of "You will find that I'm everywhere and I'm all the places you will not be." The song appears to be God talking, assuring us that He is everywhere, both in the places we long to be, and in the things we don't want to face. There's some nice syncopation to the rhythm in places, but for the most part, there's not much to do after the bridge than to keep repeating the chorus while slamming the chords and drums harder. It's not good when you're already running out of ideas at track 3.

Exit Calypsan (Only in My Dreams)
This flight comes, it's nameless
The dark is calling out my name
Escape with no traces
The movement burns inside my veins...
This curiously titled song (they're all curiously titled, but no attempt to decipher the word "Calypsan" has proven fruitful) has almost as captivating of a synth opening as "Searchlights", doing a sort of robotic dance across the speakers as Jessy starts to sing of a strange landscape of white lights and wind and a flag that belongs to "Reedsport", whatever that is. That'll come up again later, and a careful listen pulls up another reference to flight, and to escaping - hard to tell if this is an attempt at a thematic link between songs, or just lyrical laziness. (The band has a penchant for not mentioning the title of a song within that song, only for it to crop up somewhere else entirely.) The chorus simply repeats, "It's only in your dreams" (curious, because the subtitle is "Only in My Dreams"), with one line changed to offer the following wisdom: "So exit the fall, and now it's over." Yeah, no clue what that means, but it sounds cool, and the guys once again sound great harmonizing over the guitars and synths. This one was a good choice for a first radio single.

Contact
Everyday, everyday
Houses full of no escape, no escape
Runaway, runaway, it starts to pull
He's in this place, in this place
To question who you are...
The band creates an excellent diversion on this, my favorite of the album's 12 tracks. Featuring little other than a lovely, looping piano melody, more fanciful synthesizers, and some bumping drum programming to drive it along, this might be the slowest song that Falling Up has ever done (and by that, I mean mid-tempo). The band has come up with a delicious melody here, and repetition actually works in their favor, making the verses stand out in the listener's mind. Again, stellar harmonies are employed, and it feels like more and more layers are added as the song progresses, without having to resort to the usual "overwhelm every chorus with quickly played power chords: approach. Jessy's earnest call of "Everything within you will be erased" is enigmatic - why is this a good thing, something that we would want? Clearly it's a metaphor for some sort of transformation happening - I keep thinking back to Eric Champion's obscure sci-fi techno album Vertical Reality, and his story of a hacking erasing himself from the memory banks of an oppressive futuristic government. In any case, this is a strikingly beautiful song that deftly balances catchiness and artistry.

Moonlit
The neon lights, the fade of night, the fear of heights
The complex and effects
Stars, breaking tide to beach the white, and early light
And the water only from His side...
More skittering beats and piano playing get the album's most aggressive song (though only by a matter of small degrees) underway, sounding a little more like Falling Up's older tongue twisters (think "The Gathering") as Jessy spits out the labyrinthine lyrics contained within each verse. The band shows an ability once again to be fluid with their rhythms, breaking into a mellower, piano dominated break between verse and chorus that reminds a little of their song "Arafax Deep". Then the chorus goes full force, taking heaps of potential and dashing them against the rocks by repeating, "This is the way, this is the motion, let go now/This is the breath, this is the ocean, let go now" ad nauseum (with an apparent chorus of fans echoing the line "Let go now" in a few places - I guess this'll be a crowd pleaser when played live). It's interesting to note that the bridge of "Exit Calypsan" kind of teased at this song's chorus, but that's not enough to hold my interest in the song, since it only serves to make it seem even more repetitive.

Cascades
The flashlights came out
The sound of the move
The wet of the ground
You're starting to lose...
The second half of the album opens, not surprisingly, with another cascading piano riff. The piano playing is more intricate here than usual, but it still isn't quite enough to set the song apart. We've got another chorus assuring us that God is everywhere and all we need to know - it's probably one of Falling Up's most cliché choruses thus far, and that's really disappointing. Tom Cox does a nice little guitar freak-out that changes up the rhythm a bit in the bridge, but for the most part, catchy as it is, this is another example of Falling Up an auto-pilot. (Interesting side note - I had assumed that this song's title was a present tense verb, as in "Escalates", but it could also refer to a mountain range that runs through the band's native Oregon.)

Meridians
Changing up the flood now
The wind is blowing hard
The brilliance is the call out
The silence in your heart...
Now we're really getting deep into the section where I get the songs confused with one another, so I'm going to try to be more brief. This one appears to make references to sailing, as evidenced by the navigational word in its title, so I'm starting to think that the "escape" they're singing about is one that happens over water. The verses are once, again, a deftly played latticework of drums and piano, so it's disappointing when that pops out into yet another chorus where Tom Cox is doing nothing but hitting power chords one simple quarter note at a time. Come on, dude, the rest of your band has rhythm, so why can't you change it up a bit? The band is encouraging us, "It's time to say goodbyes, it's time to light your fears, it's time to wake your heart", whatever that means.

Lights of Reedsport
You're a slave when you're free
Cause the remedy says
You will never be saved
Open up, 'cause there's still time...
This was one of the songs that stood out to me the most at first, but only because of the dazzling intro of synth notes moving rapidly up and down. Pure ear candy, and it only serves to mask yet another song that sticks to the same mold and fails to be memorable. There are some interesting things going on in the lyrics, most notably a reference to a knife on the ground (is a person being encouraged to reconsider suicide, or does that have to do with the escape attempt?), another reference to feeling "erased", and more of the usual escapist dialogue. There could be a great aural story being told here, if the group could manage to vary the music enough to help with the mental pictures that the lyrics are likely to provoke. More strong melodies and backing vocals here, but again, too repetitive.

Marathons
We are the ones called jaded and young
But we have direction
Shadows we've found, and in them we run
A quiet affection...
I almost always forget which is which between this song and "Meridians". It must be the similar titles. Let's see, what's different here... we've still got virtually the same tempo as the rest of the album, so that's not it. The faint, electronically munched echoes of synthesizers at the beginning are interesting, and Tom's guitar riff is a little more involved this time around. The rhythmic cadence of the verses sounds like one too many other songs, though, and hey wait, this is the song that talks about sailing, not "Meridians". See, I got them confused while I was actively listening to the album. That ain't good. There's a theme of a young generation turning things around for good here, as the chorus thrashes about a little more than most of these songs dare to, but it's nothing that we haven't heard before on older songs like "New Hope Generation".

Fearless
Broken from the shattered hopes
And breathless from the stare
Standing in this phony room
I can see you there...
Now here's a nice change of pace. Well, not literal pace, as we're still going full steam ahead, but the instrumentation is noticeably more interesting here, from the stumbling guitar riffs that get the song off to a self-conscious start to the effervescent refrain, which actually changes up the song formula by following a loud verse with a quieter chorus. The way these guys sing, "Light from the water has swept me away..." just sticks in my head for days at a time, and it's propelled along nicely by the drums, which break out of the four-on-the-floor convention by hitting the strongest on 1, 4, and 7 - a syncopation technique that will almost always grab my ear.) (It also seems to refer back to the song "Lights of Reedsport", and of course the word "fearless", which doesn't appear here, appeared in "Flights". I need a freakin' whiteboard to keep track of all this stuff!) By this point, there have been so many iterations of the same thing that it takes a few listens for this one to stand out - the band should have slowed it down or played in a rhythm other than 4/4 songs before unleashing this one on us, and then it would have had more impact as the penultimate song leading into a grand finale. Oh well; it still sounds fantastic despite its surroundings.

Intro the Gravity
I see beneath, I hear the breath
I feel the deep and shallow dreams that try to pass
But in this place, where echoes stay
Is just the place where I will start to find escape...
Shouldn't it be "Into the Gravity"? These song titles are getting even weirder. This one attempts to morph together "Contact" and "Arafax Deep" with another positively glowing piano intro that just fills the room when it makes its entrance. But, as a finale, this one actually gets bogged down by only having programming and no live drums. It doesn't seem to "build" the way that a song should to appropriately end an album like this. That rhythm, and the harmonies, bring the boys a little too close to boy band territory, if you ask me. Granted, their lyrics are still way more oblique than you'd hear from most boy bands, but I don't feel like much of anything is being wrapped up here. "This is oceans in, races start again, 'cause you want everything" - not exactly a satisfying refrain to leave us with, especially when it just hangs on an unresolved note right where we'd expect another song to start up. The problem with keeping your entire album up tempo is that it's hard to cap it off with a song that really feels like it should be at the end, and the unfortunate result is that a lot of listeners are going to tune out well before the album ends, and not have anything to draw them back in again before the CD stops spinning.

I'm sure that there's a lot more to explore here in terms of how the songs relate to one another, and what sort of picture the band is trying to paint overall. Most albums that do that sort of thing have me hanging on every word, trying to decipher every clue offered, but Dawn Escapes just hit's a point where that ceases to be enjoyable, so I stop trying. The band clearly has a lot going on upstairs; now they just need to find a way to translate their cryptic brand of interconnected storytelling into a more encompassing musical setting. Fun and speedy modern rock is a great way to catch the ear, but it requires having more than one or two tricks up your sleeve to keep that ear. And as much as I raved about Falling Up being one of Christian music's best new bands, they're not going to be very well remembered if they don't find a way to expand dramatically on their core sound by the time their third album rolls around.

I'll still give this album four stars, since it's above average listening, and I'd rather round up from 3.5. But it's a far cry from the last four-star rating I gave them for Crashings, which was really a 4.5 rounded down. My rating this time around is a way of saying that established fans will have fun with it, and I'm included in that group. But if you haven't checked Falling Up out yet, please start with their first album, which is far more engaging from top to bottom.

ALBUM WORTH:
Searchlights $1.50
Exhibition $1
Flights $1
Exit Calypsan (Only in My Dreams) $1
Contact $1.50
Moonlit $1
Cascades $1
Meridians $.50
Lights of Reedsport $1
Marathons $.50
Fearless $1.50
Intro the Gravity $1
TOTAL: $12.50

Band Members:
Jessy Ribordy: Lead vocals
Tom Cox: Guitar, backing vocals
Joseph A. Kisselburgh: Guitar, backing vocals
Jeremy Miller: Bass
Josh Shroy: Drums

Website: http://www.fallinguponline.com/

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Driving