Big City Dreams

Honesty

Record Review by Daniel Brody

Big City Dreams are the contemporary embodiment of Do It Yourself. Without a record label, they have put out two EPs. Without support from radio and music video channels (who are becoming increasingly meaningless anyway), they have earned fans through the internet and constant touring. This is the kind of earnest, well-meaning band that will personally do as much of the legwork promoting themselves as they possibly can. Because they lack any shred of self-consciousness about this aspect of their band, they will fail to endear themselves to the postmodern Pitchfork readers that seemingly demand annotations with their rock and roll.

To be fair, the cheese factor is high with Big City Dreams. These guys take emo, make the guitars ring instead of plod, and come up with a pop formula that sounds as inevitably ubiquitous as their audio doppelganger Fall Out Boy. Every song is about that nervous moment before something really rad happens in a teenager's life, like making up after fighting with that cute girl who wears a studded belt. Being an adult, I had almost forgotten how relationships used to work back in high school; all of these songs sound like they are being delivered on the aforementioned girl's stoop, in apology for something that was most certainly not that big of a deal. It's very awkward, it will make you cringe and hope that more touring will drag these guys into something resembling maturity.

But, hey, any band comparing themselves to the '86 Mets, as Big City Dreams do in “Miracle,” at least have their hearts in the right place – right on their sleeves. The best song, the relentlessly exuberant, dare-to-go-steady-with-me “Can't Catch Halley's Comet,” is in all likelihood the emo-est song of all time. I mean, really, of course you can't catch Halley's Comet! It's hurtling through outer space at speeds of thousands of miles an hour. Way to set yourself up to fail, dude! This music is way too much fun for me to hate on it.