Source: Album Artwork
Arizona-born quartet Farewell, My Love have been making waves online since the release of their debut EP A Dance You Won’t Forget back in 2011. Since then, the band has continued to develop its theatrical sound, unleashing two further EP’s, their debut album Gold Tattoos, and embarking on countless tours worldwide. Above It All is Farewell, My Love’s sophomore album; listen as they dive deeper into this new wave of genre-bending music.
Above It All gets off to a dramatic start. ‘Welcome To The Beginning’ is a symphonic, choral instrumental, transitioning quickly into the album’s first single ‘Burn Out The Night.’ It’s here that we see the first traces of Farewell, My Love’s theatre. “Life is too short to fake who you are in order to fit in” the band expressed of the track’s message, “It’s a personal reminder that no matter how many temptations there may be out there to change into something you’re not comfortable being, to always stay true to yourself and what you believe is right.” The high tempo and intense guitars accentuate this anxiety, highlighting the intricacies of Farewell, My Love’s feature single.
‘Burn Out The Night’, however, bears a considerable amount of stylistic similarities to older bands in the genre. This dramatic, Nightmare Before Christmas-esque vibe is something which has been channelled by countless artists, most recently by Florida’s Set It Off, and most notably in Avenged Sevenfold’s ‘A Little Piece of Heaven.’ The result is a track that feels like an imitation.
Inside a Nightmare sets a similar pace, gearing up Above It All to grind to a staggering halt with ‘Last Goodbye’, ‘Skip The Memories II’, and ‘Hit or Miss’. These softer tracks are the album’s strongest, and are lyrically on a completely different level to the weak, almost distasteful lyrics of commercial track ‘Crazy’— “please medicate me till I lose my head.”
Above It All fluctuates in genre constantly. Farewell, My Love’s lengthy sophomore album has pop-rock undertones, dashes of impressive guitar solos, and a raw, theatrical tone. The band excel at their more considered, commercial tracks—like ‘Maybe I’ and ‘Skip The Memories II’—but do lack originality elsewhere.
Farewell, My Love has expressed that “Above It All is absolutely the best representation of the band that [they’ve] written to date”, but there’s definitely still room for them to grow. It could be that pesky sophomore slump, but with Above It All Farewell, My Love will struggle to stand out.
