Such Is The Way To The Stars

Album review

All One Surface's debut full-length is a soft-focus emo sundae. The young U.K. combo largely stays well away from the screeching post-hardcore overtones that tinge many a U.S. emo release. Instead, tracks like "Choices" and "Bleeding Centre Stage" establish themselves with clean channel guitars and breathy vocals, never making the switch to anthemic pogoing or outsized riffs that this sort of genre usually does. Sure, "Back to One" channels early Green Day, and "One Last Throw" is a valiant, if tepid Foo Fighters rewrite. But for most of Such Is the Way to the Stars, All One Surface is content to drift behind mellow guitars, meandering piano work, and vocalist Ven Pedro's youthful emote. This approach is certainly very pretty, particularly on "Fairytales and Lovesongs." But pretty is really only part of the equation with emo, isn't it? There needs to be a foundation of flinty grit, of bedrock abutting heartbreak. For all of its quiet percussion, piano lilts, and slight acoustic verses, All One Surface ends up sounding like the Sundays covering Sleeping at Last, and just doesn't make an impression.
© Johnny Loftus /TiVo