Copeland has historically been lumped in with numerous other indie-rock acts such as Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, though the band really doesn't deserve such denigration. But with its newest release, "You Are My Sunshine," Copeland seems content to associate itself with other indie-rock groups by solidifying its roots in a banal, flavorless sound. While the band should have pushed to create 11 distinct tracks, it instead settled to give listeners an album of indistinguishable atmospheric dirges.
The opening track, "Should You Return," gives the listener excess hope for an above-average album. Beginning with the artificially vocoded vocals of lead singer Aaron Marsh, the song eventually blooms into a fully orchestrated yet beautifully understated chorus of, "Now there's nothing left to say to change your mind/ And if you're unhappy still I will be hanging on your line/ Should you return." While the delay-laden guitars in the verses keep the song relatively upbeat and hopeful, the dark piano buried amongst the strings in the choruses grounds the song in a stark sense of reality.
The band returns to its safety zone with "The Grey Man," another lofty melody complete with affected guitars and falsetto vocals. While the song is certainly catchy enough and worthy of a solid B+ in terms of musicality, it lacks the harmonic push-pull dynamics of the album opener and ultimately sinks into mediocrity as it pushes the three-minute point.
"Good Morning Fire Eater," starts with the potential to take a turn for a more interesting route, but languishes in the indie-standard 'repeating drum loop with two-bar melody' cycle. Even with a synthesizer solo stuck in there, the track never really takes off, but rather idles on the runway until it's out of gas, then explodes for no apparent reason.
As track after track goes by, it seems impossible that a song will arise that is different from the mass of other soft-drum-and-falsetto ballads. Surprisingly enough, "Not Allowed" breaks from the pack. While the instrumentals themselves aren't significantly different from anything else on the album, the lyrics are interesting enough this time around to keep the listener listening to what Marsh will say next.
As Marsh croons, "Here we go/ I'll make a joke for you now, make you smile/ But I'm not allowed to be sad," his pleading voice hits home the point that this guy has serious issues dealing with his emotions. Even more confusing is his claim in "Not Allowed" that he is incapable of being sad, although one is hard-pressed to find a 'happy' song on "You Are My Sunshine."
With three tracks left, listeners enter the home stretch of "You Are My Sunshine" hoping for one more solid song, complete with the whole array of melody, harmony and emotion. But these hopes are all in vain, as the album putters out with a string of more self-defeating tunes about the inability to control time and circumstances.
"You Are My Sunshine" had the potential to be a career-defining album for Copeland, but the band instead chose to go the easy route and write 11 songs that are nearly indistinguishable rather than throw out the generic in search of the ingenuous. Although it may seem too simple of a critique, it speaks volumes that the same drum sound is used for almost every track on the album. As common as that may be, after 11 cuts of muffled-and-mixed-into-the-background percussion, everything coming out of the speakers takes on the same shade of gray. While some songs may be a bit catchier or emotional than others, none are memorable enough to be recalled after the album's first spin.
The opening track "Should You Return" is definitely worth an iTunes purchase, but the rest of "You Are My Sunshine" should be reserved for die-hard fans only.
