If you want to talk ambition, you might want to look towards the Transit War. If Miss Your Face, the band’s debut full-length out on Orange Peal Records doesn’t make them as big a band as Brand New and/or Jimmy Eat World -- well, there just ain’t no justice in the world. Miss Your Face has all the ingredients a band needs for a huge breakthrough album. Too bad it didn’t come out five years ago when bands like Brand New and Jimmy Eat World were releasing their huge albums.

This unfortunate timing shouldn’t matter, though. Bands that got huge off this kind of album haven’t re-written it -- for better or worse. Miss Your Face is a multi-layered punk-inspired power-pop album with heaps of energy, enough to make even the most melancholic moments seem upbeat. The album is simply all over the place with layered vocals leading into gang vocals followed by spastic moments and other such patters occurring frequently. Despite the album going off in any number of directions, it continually regains focus, rarely allowing the listener to drift too far off.

There are a lot of bands popping up now who are citing their contemporaries as influences. It doesn’t sound as though the Transit War are recreating a tried and true formula just to cash in. What separates them from that clutter is that they’ve written a nearly perfectly crafted album that reeks of influence, but at the same time seems completely sincere and humble.

If you’re looking for points of criticism, you could argue that at times the listener might have to keep checking what song is on, as the tracks can bleed together from time to time, especially on the first few listens. But were it not my job to do so, I really wouldn’t be looking to point out the faults on Miss Your Face.

The Transit War should be all over music television channels in no time if Orange Peal has the resources to push this album the right way. Normally I’d be cringing at the thought of an album I like being a TRL breakthrough, but it would make sense for Miss Your Face.