[rating=8.00]
Listening to Promises from The Boxer Rebellion is like gorging yourself on chocolate for a bit before you start to get tired of it and suddenly remember that you can add some things to the chocolate to make it even better. The album’s first six tracks have a lush, ethereal quality to them that is perfect for fans of soaring melodies, epic choruses, synths and dance rock, but it does start to feel stale halfway through because there isn’t a ton of variety. So it comes as a welcome surprise when the album kicks into a different gear during the second half of the record. It saves the album from being good but not remarkable, and instead makes it into something grand.
The first single, “Diamonds,” is hooky synth rock that will have you dancing in no time flat, and the echoing, swirling guitars and epic sound-scapes that are painted on “Fragile” will take your breath away, but the album goes on autopilot until it hits “New York” and remembers to wake up. The haunting keys of that track eventually lead into an utterly primal and tribal percussive beat that shakes the band and the listener from their reverie, and though the gradual build on “Safe House” is a familiar song tactic, it explodes into something powerful, particularly when singer Nathan Nicholson’s channels Stephen Christian’s vocal strains and sings, “Help me out/I have no guarantee/But the shade of/The safe house.”
Promises starts off solid, gets a bit predictable through the middle, but succeeds in becoming something altogether different in the second half. The nice thing is that the predictable part isn’t exactly bad either, so there is plenty to like here from start to finish. By the time you hear the heavenly rock ‘n roll of “Dream” or the spellbinding, almost operatic closing title track which follows it, you will come away feeling mesmerized. Promises is a rapturous, gorgeous experience.
