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It’s hard for me to give We Are The Union three stars. They’ve got a great sound, and seem to be on top of their game in terms of writing a new age ska song, yet their most recent release Great Leaps Forward falls short in terms of diversity.
We Are The Union Kicks off the album right with hard hitting 5 chord progression, slowing into a more horn oriented intro. The track, We‘re All Dead, bounces back fast from its slowed intro, and you’re thrown into the middle of a modern punk/ska frenzy. We’re All Dead is a fast, fun song that throws your head back to early pop punk, when things were a little more sincere/fun.
While We Are The Union can write a damn good song, they seem to employ the same writing routine for each one, which makes the whole album seem like one big long ska/punk song. If you weren’t looking at your iTunes song description, you’d never know the track even changed. For some, this may be a great thing. All the songs do connect well together, except for me they get old, fast. Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic does throw in some clean ska strumming into it, but then it reverts back to straight forward strumming and minor riffage between vocals.
I first heard We Are The Union about 3 months ago, while I was searching through Paper and Plastick’s impressive line up. I went over to their MySpace, and instantly fell in love with What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate. It’s a great song, and worthy of every bit of praise. There’s enough commotion to grab you and get you energized, but it’s clean enough to grasp and bob your head to. It’s fun, but again, sounds like everything else on this record.
Great Leaps Forward isn’t a bad album, it just struggles to keep your attention for more than a few songs at a time. We Are The Union has the potential to be the next best band in the scene, but they need to really work on writing songs that differentiate from each other. If you want to know if the album is for you, go to their MySpace, listen any of the songs they have there from the album, and imagine hearing it for 30 minutes straight. If the answer is yes, then this is the album for you. If not, at least understand that We Are The Union know how to write one hell of a song.