Steiner Street - Time & Temperature
Record Label: Break a Sweat/ TTLR
Release Date: April 24, 2012
Most up and coming bands these days seem to be pop punk bands. Bad pop punk bands at that. Steiner Street is an up and coming pop punk band, but certainly not a bad one.
The four piece Portland, Maine, based band released their debut earlier this year. Time & Temperature is eight straight tracks of fast and catchy pop punk. No ballads, no obligatory acoustic songs, no out of place screams. (Although there is ne very unnecessary breakdown in "Run Ourselves Ragged.")
Opener "I Should've Never Had a Birthday" fades in before a catchy intro. This song features the most memorable chorus on the album, despite its only consisting of the lines, "What's up?/ What's new?/ What's up with you?" No while those aren't great lyrics, they are great for shouting along to. Unfortunately, the vocalist has a very whiny voice that gets old after a while. Fortunately, the followup track, single "Fish in a Barrel," features a different singer. It also begins sounded very much like a Wonder Years song.
"Light Shined" is probably the heaviest song on the album (EP?). About a minute from the end, all music stops except for a single guitar line and cheering and the sound of cans opening can be heard before gang vocal shouts of "It just wouldn't be the same again" kick in. The next song is "Make it Count," which is the fastest on the album. "Frost" is the best song on here. It is a great pop punk anthem to be sung at the top of the lungs and has a very impressive sounding guitar brisge.
There are some drawbacks here too though, as with any album (except The Ugly Organ of course). As mentioned somewhere up there, the lead singer has a very whiny voice. While not so grating as Fireworks' vocalist, he definitely is not great by any stretch of the imagination. I also spoke of an unnecessary breakdown. Hell yes I did. At exactly 1:30 into track 6, "Run Ourselves Ragged" is one of the most pointless breakdowns I have ever heard. It seems as if the band decided, "Hey, we're pretty respectable and not scene enough... let's add a breakdown!"
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