Subb

Subb's "Daylight Saving" frustrates me.

As a ska-punk band, Subb is quite fun and has a really good grasp on making the various mechanics of the genre mesh in interesting ways. Songs like "It's Alright," "Out Of The Line" and "Take Your Time" are great mixes of melodic punk with skittering guitars and just the right amount of attitude. They come off sounding like early Goldfinger at times but have more or less shed the stigmatism of being "Sublime-clones."

As a pop-punk band Subb has written a few really strong songs. The first two tracks, "Daylight Saving" and "Home Is Where The Heart Aches" are good driving power-pop with a heavy rock backbone. It reminds me of Less Than Jake's "Borders and Boundaries" material that was poppy without sacrificing any strength. When they flex this muscle, Subb has a way with writing really powerful choruses that immensely improve on some of their weaker songs.

Standouts aside, the rest of the album is unfortunately unmemorable pop punk. There isn't anything that makes this material stand apart from any of the legions of New Found Glory-esque bands out there. Not that it isn't catchy or well played, it's just painfully generic. The single "Twenty One" falls into this category for me and it bewilders me why it was chosen as the standout track. Furthermore, as I sat listening to the song "Westside" my teenage brother walked into the room and said "Wow… this song sounds almost exactly like Mest's What's The Dillio." It does. Eep.

"Daylight Saving" is a collection of songs that are individually pretty strong but together come off as wholly unsatisfying. It seems like the band is stuck between two genres, they can play each well but have a hard time amalgamating the two. This is a transitional album, there may be a great record from these guys in the future but they're not quite there yet.