Romantic Comedy

Album Review

After releasing an LP where Big Troubles’ Ian Drennan and Alex Craig recorded the songs in their respective bedrooms and traded tapes back and forth, their second album, Romantic Comedy, is a much more polished affair recorded in an actual studio with a name producer (Mitch Easter) and contributions from the rest of the band (drummer Sam Franklin and bassist Luka Usmiani). Almost out of necessity the record has a less noisy, less cheap sound and feel. No longer do the bandmembers bury their vocals and melodies under waves of staticky guitar noise and crappy-sounding drums; instead, the inherent autumnal loveliness is loud and clear. Both Drennan and Craig have wispy and pure singing voices that fit perfectly with the melancholy jangle of the guitars that Easter layers with care, but without the usual amount of studio gloss he so often uses. In fact, the band retains enough of the noise and clatter to keep things sonically interesting and give the sticky-sweet melodies some grit and substance. It’s a balancing act that many bands can’t quite seem to pull off, but on song after song, Big Troubles sound like a perfect blend of '80s jangle pop bounce, '90s shoegaze haze, and timeless pure pop catchiness served up with a huge helping of heartache and longing. At times it may sound a little too much like their labelmates the Pains of Being Pure at Heart (like on the radio-ready "Minor Keys"), but that’s an accident of them having the same influences and a similar approach more than it is a matter of copycatting on Big Troubles' part. Plus, Big Troubles almost out-Pain the Pains on that song, and the rest of the album too. You could plug any song on Romantic Comedy onto a Pains record and it would improve it markedly. The only downside to the album is that the songs begin to blend together a little by the end, but in a comfortably warm way instead of a boring, take-the-record-off-now kind of way. You’d be much more likely to want to play it again and then play it for your friends, especially the ones who keep telling you they don’t make ‘em like that anymore. Big Troubles just did!