Dayton, Ohio’s Simply Waiting seem to have a pretty standard emo sound at first glance. When the first track came on I was worried, because it sounded like some new Victory band. As the CD progressed, I realized that most of the songs are acoustic-based, and not in a Dashboard kind of way, or a tacked-on-afterthought-on-every-emo-CD kind of way. The acoustic guitar parts tend to be very intricate, almost deserving the term shredding at times. Skilled guitarists they are for sure.

Skilled songwriters, I’m not so sure. None of the songs really grab me, and I think it may be due in part of the vocalist. His voice is somewhere between Chris Conley and Davey Havok, but not as good as either. He comes across airy and weak, with a particular moment of weakness being in “Went With The Count” when he lands on a crucial falsetto note to start the chorus, and misses the pitch and sounds pitiful to boot. I can deal with a bit of bad vocals, but he’s not going for the rough or raw thing; he’s trying to sing and failing for the most part. Also, the melodies he writes are nothing exciting, but maybe it’s the music he’s singing over that’s to blame for that; music that is so floating is tough to write over.

Instrumentation is the band’s strong suit. They mix things up a lot in this department with some all electric heavier tracks like “Depletion,” and some tracks with electric and acoustic like the Coheed-ish “Strategy In Moving”. The rest are all acoustic, mostly with drums and electric bass to push it. There is also quite a bit of piano on here, as on the Penfold-style “The You And I,” and there is a dabbling of other synthesizer sounds, but it’s never overbearing.

Simply Waiting definitely has some things going for them: good use of instrumentation, a broad range of styles and dynamics, and skilled performers. However, the majority of tracks are slow and don’t go anywhere much structure-wise, and the vocals drag the songs down too much. I think I prefer the electronic instrumental secret track over most of the real songs.