Joy Thief - Buried Under Dream

Joy Thief - Buried Under Dreams is an Alternative, Pop Rock/Punk collaborated album. Buried Under Dreams is Joy Thief’s debut album. By the sounds of the album to me, Buried Under Dreams will probably be the first of many albums to come. The sound from the album and Joy Thief is clean cut and is nicely polished. There are thirteen songs (fourteen with the bonus song) on the album and pulls in with just under an hour worth of music. For a band to put forth and to show this much effort and time in producing their debut album, just stands out and proves to me that they are serious about what they are doing. There are five members that coexist in Joy Thief Nic Brown on Lead Vocals, Jared Featherstone plays guitar along side with Nathan Jenks, Kelly Nindorf is on Bass Guitar and finally Jeff Strittmater is on drums. Jared, Nathan, and Kelly all share Backup Vocals.

Songs on Buried Under Dreams...

1. Sins Are Red
2. If We’re Not Right
3. Too Late
4. My DayDream My Obsession
5. I Believe In You
6. Where Are You
7. Drunk Girl
8. Time We Had
9. Everything
10. Take Me Back
11. I’ll Have Another
12. Running
13. So Long
14. “Bonus”

“Drunk Girl” deserves the first mention for this review. After listing to the opening section of the song it easily became a favourite. The opening is a montage of Joy Thief singing vocals in what appears to be a bar/pub sounds in the background. This song has the Polished Punk and Rock sound that is most common to “New Punk” bands i.e. Good Charlotte, Sum 41, Fall Out Boy. Another part of the song that I liked was how the guitars and the drums were played when The Line “On A Week Day, On A Week Day Yeah” came up the first time.

“...I know that you love me when its three AM and you are pounding on my door. I know that you love me so when you’ve had too much to drink and you are puking on my door...”

Track thirteen and fourteen, “So Long” and the bonus track are both acoustical tracks. In the song “So Long” the acoustics was almost hidden by the loudness by Kelly on Bass and Nic on Vocals. Halfway through the song the Tempo gets faster and the volume is turned up. Electric Guitars take place of the acoustical Guitar. For the last minute of the song the tempo and the volume is turned back down like the start of the song and stays this way to finish out the rest of the song. What I don’t get is the time for the song is 7:08 but the true length of the song is only 5:08 so there is two minutes of quietness where there is no sound what so ever. I’m not sure if the band intended on this or it was an error done at the recording sessions. The length of the pause really put a downer to the song.

“...I’ll carry you with me forever though you’re gone.
And I can’t walk away from the plans we made.
And I refuse to turn my back on the memories...”

The second acoustical song is the bonus track on the album. The song opens up with about thirty seconds of a slow acoustical picking solo. The song is a basic “unplugged” acoustic guitar song. It does add a nice bonus to the album.

“Running” was the song that came across to my attention the most when I was reading the lyrics from inside the front cover. The lyrics are; I feel are thoughtfully written. The lyrics are about someone dying, and how hard it is to say goodbye, how you will carry the memories and how the fact that you never see that person again. A couple of lines that are worth a mentioning are the last line and the first line of the second verse.

“Sins Are Red” is the song that gets the ball rollin on the album. At about forty seconds into the song Joy Thief breaks down and puts their pressure and speed into the song. Throughout the song the tempo changes from fast to slow. The song also fades right out in the middle of the song but only for a second before the speed picks up again.

www.joythief.com
www.myspace.com/joythiefband