Dananananaykroyd – There Is A Way (Pizza College)
Back before I ever heard Dananananaykroyd’s music, I wanted to hate them. In my opinion, their self-consciously quirky name just screamed “hipster bullshit.” I expected them to play the sort of music that seems like one big ironic reference, like all the crap that was coming out of Williamsburg, Brooklyn circa 2003. By 2009, it made sense that that whole aesthetic would have filtered over to Ireland, Dananananaykroyd’s country of origin. Imagine my surprise when, upon actually listening to them, I discovered that the American aesthetic they’d actually picked up on was that of late 90s chaotic hardcore and emo. On their debut album, 2009’s Hey Everyone!, they mingled the madcap dual-vocal approach of the Blood Brothers with the off-kilter ramshackle pop hooks of Cap’n Jazz. Though the album contained the occasional subdued moment, such as borderline ballad “Black Wax,” for the most part it had the loose, unfiltered energy of a runaway truck. This came through most obviously at moments like the midsong instrumental pileup of “Infinity Milk,” or on the album’s opener, the effervescent “Hey Everyone!/Watch This!” This track began with the entire band chanting the band’s name and was driven by hyperspeed interplay between dual vocalists Calum Gann and John Bailie Jr, who at times would get so excited that they’d babble overtop of one another, rendering each of the dual vocal lines incomprehensible.
Dananananaykroyd – There Is A Way (Pizza College)
Back before I ever heard Dananananaykroyd’s music, I wanted to hate them. In my opinion, their self-consciously quirky name just screamed “hipster bullshit.” I expected them to play the sort of music that seems like one big ironic reference, like all the crap that was coming out of Williamsburg, Brooklyn circa 2003. By 2009, it made sense that that whole aesthetic would have filtered over to Ireland, Dananananaykroyd’s country of origin. Imagine my surprise when, upon actually listening to them, I discovered that the American aesthetic they’d actually picked up on was that of late 90s chaotic hardcore and emo. On their debut album, 2009’s Hey Everyone!, they mingled the madcap dual-vocal approach of the Blood Brothers with the off-kilter ramshackle pop hooks of Cap’n Jazz. Though the album contained the occasional subdued moment, such as borderline ballad “Black Wax,” for the most part it had the loose, unfiltered energy of a runaway truck. This came through most obviously at moments like the midsong instrumental pileup of “Infinity Milk,” or on the album’s opener, the effervescent “Hey Everyone!/Watch This!” This track began with the entire band chanting the band’s name and was driven by hyperspeed interplay between dual vocalists Calum Gann and John Bailie Jr, who at times would get so excited that they’d babble overtop of one another, rendering each of the dual vocal lines incomprehensible.
There are no moments like that on There Is A Way, which is an immediate strike against it. It can be all too easy to take potshots at a young band’s attempt to follow up a successful debut album, which is why phrases like “sophomore slump” and “the difficult second album” are critical cliches. Nonetheless, while there are examples of a band making an excellent first album, then blowing it away with an even better followup (Cave In and Drive Like Jehu spring immediately to mind), they are the exception. In general, the “difficult second album” takes one of two paths: either it’s the result of an attempt to reinvent the band, in which case it’s too different and alienates the fans; or it’s almost the same as the first album, in which case it inevitably appears as a lesser version of the debut–again, alienating to fans. On There Is A Way, Dananananaykroyd manage to do a bit of both, and while there are pleasant moments to be found here, the result more often seems to lead with its shortcomings.
The band’s lineup has changed a bit since the first album. They’ve gotten a new bass player, but much more importantly, John Bailie Jr, who previously switched between second vocals and second drums, has become solely a vocalist. This may have been due to a 2010 accident in which he fell off a stage midperformance and broke his arm so significantly that he required emergency surgery and needed four screws permanently installed in his arm. If the result of this accident is that he can’t play drums anymore, then I feel bad for complaining about the result, but nonetheless, it can’t be denied that the second drum kit did a lot to fuel Dananananaykroyd’s energy. They show that they can still work up a good head of steam on tracks like “All Us Authors” and “Time Capsule,” but the album still isn’t the nonstop maniacal party that Hey Everyone! was, and the loss of the second drum kit is bound to contribute to that at least a little bit. Worse, with Bailie singing on every song now instead of singing on some and playing drums on others, there are times in which it appears that he and main vocalist Calum Gann don’t quite know how to make room for each other. The two sing the first verse and chorus of “Muscle Memory” entirely in unison, which is fine, if a bit superfluous, and while the song is catchy enough, it would have benefited from more of the actual vocal interplay that the two used to engage in when they sang on a song together. It feels like they previously looked at those songs as rare events, and rose to the occasion, but now that they’re singing together on every song, they don’t put as much effort into making their vocal parts interesting anymore. This hurts the album as a whole.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate There Is A Way by any means. If anything, I’m sure it’ll grow on me, and considering how much I loved Hey Everyone!, the fact that I like this album slightly less is only a relative criticism. There are still some great moments here–the chorus of “Good Time” makes it briefly apparent that Gann and Bailie can still get up to their glorious vocal ridiculousness on occasion, while “Muscle Memory” and “Apostrophe” contain choruses as memorable as anything Dananananaykroyd have ever written. Still and all, I must write this review from a position of slight disappointment; Dananananaykroyd have come somewhat back down to earth on this album. And yet, once I get used to the fact that it’s not the otherworldly triumph Hey Everyone! was, I’m sure I’ll still like it a lot. While There Is A Way may fit the traditional description of a “difficult second album,” a “sophomore slump” it most assuredly is not.
