Posted on: January 29, 2009 Posted by: anfnewsacct Comments: 0

The emotional opening to Anorexic Beauty Queen’s “This Little Light” presses on the emo sound, but does not go into the melodrama that a number of acts in that genre get hung up on. This means that the vocals actually match the output of the rest of the band, and make for a balanced act (instead of the vocal-heavy approach of acts like Dashboard Confessional).

Even when the vocalist step things up, the rest of the band skillfully moves away to make this approach seem all the more impressive; Anorexic Beauty Queen is not a band that a producer has got together just to be big, but rather a collection of individuals that know how to make their resulting music the best it can possibly be. “Soon, I Promise” is more of the same for Anorexic Beauty Queen, but the guitars that are dominant during this track play more to the At The Drive-In sound than anything; the slightly-nasal sound of the vocals during this track play the antagonistic role perfectly to the more earthy guitars here. “Fugue In D Major” is a track where the balance that Anorexic Beauty Queen had during previous tracks is dropped on its head. During this track, the emotional content of the instrumental arrangements is increased as the role of the vocalist during this track is diminished completely.

The piano heavy style of “I’ll See You Soon” blends together the current emo style in which Anorexic Beauty Queen works with a much more classic genre in American music. This timelessness is exactly what Anorexic Beauty Queen needs to ride to further success, and that is exactly what they do time and time again on “This Little Light”. It is not only that Anorexic Beauty Queen plays to the older and newer styles of music on this album, but that they make a timeline of influences that pretty much is solid through the last fifty or sixty years of music. A number of acts go and may use influences from forty years ago, but one can be sure when they are listening to Anorexic Beauty Queen that the band will go back every five years and pick out a band that in turn will influence a major segment of a track on this album. “Lullabies” is the best track on the album, hands-down. If the band can create just one or two more of these tracks on their next album, Anorexic Beauty Queen will be the next “must have” emo bands on the market.

Top Tracks: Lullabies, Soon I Promise

Rating: 7.1/10

[JMcQ]

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