Awolnation - "The Phantom Five"

Go on and ghost us, then. Bye!

Alt-Rockers AWOLNATION are back with their sixth studio album, The Phantom Five. And, according to frontman Aaron Bruno (whose high school nickname was “AWOL”), potentially the final Awolnation album.

As the album’s cover indicates, the band’s deep electronic tendencies and danceable compositions are very much intact on The Phantom Five, and you don’t have to get further than the albums second track, “Party People” to be thoroughly reassured of that. And as the next track, “Panoramic View”, demonstrates, even the album’s lighter tracks are largely rhythm-first, making them still feel welcome on a dancefloor.

Circling back to the opening track: “Jump Sit Stand March” also uses electronic elements, but its sound seethes with frustration more than anything else. Bruno has stated that the song is “…about overstimulation and being frustrated with having to please everybody’s virtues all at the same time.” Fittingly, it turns out, the song features Emily Armstrong, who had not yet been announced as Linkin Park‘s new vocalist when the album released.

Little ironies, eh?

The only other feature on the album showcases Del the Funky Homosapien on “I Am Happy”, and it is both better and worse than Armstrong’s feature. Del gets a better part — honestly, his verses are the only enjoyable part of this song. However, the song is criminally repetitive well before it ends, making it unlistenable. And with only a three-minute runtime, you know it’s bad to make me hate it.

Here’s where we start getting into the album’s real flaw — there are three of these songs that really just feel like vague, incomplete ideas. After “I Am Happy”, we have “Bang Your Head”, which is fun and heavy, but has no real meat to it and lasts just over two minutes. Then there’s “City of Nowhere”, which is less than a minute-and-a-half of pretty sounds. Again, no meat.

The album’s total length is only 33 minutes, and six of those feel, basically, wasted — just as Del’s feature feels wasted.

There are still good songs here — the aforementioned “Party People” is a bit reptitive, but still very fun; “Barbarian” and “A Letter to No One” both have their merits. But the album ultimately feels half-assed. Bruno has pitched the album by stating that “[i]t functions almost as a “greatest hits” album…”, which, after listening to it, tells me that he’s just fallen back on the band’s old tricks to toss together a final outing.

It could have been better.

Rating: Yellow