Silverstrand

Album Review

Formed in northern Virginia in 1998, Over It is now based on Orange County, California and deals in the kind of high-energy guitar pop that has become the region's calling card. Too emotional to be called punk and too edgy to be called emo, Over It's music goes down like a really good granola bar — sweet but substantial, crunchy but nutritious. If the band has a weakness, it's relentless cheerfulness and sincerity. Those are refreshing qualities in a hard-charging rock & roll band, but every once in awhile you'll find yourself longing for just a faint tinge of tangy irony to offset the sweetness. What they give you instead is an occasional burst of insane velocity — the headlong sprint of "Ignore the Noise," for example, or the Gilbert & Sullivan-meets-Daddy Freddy speed-rap of "Partner in Crime." Everything else, in particular the exhortatory "We Are the Ordinary" and the ambiguously admonishing "Take a Look Inside," celebrates the best of the human spirit at a slower tempo, but with just as much bare-knuckled intensity and a big, happy smile. Recommended.