AMERICAN HI-FI
FIGHT THE FREQUENCY

I quite liked the debut American Hi-Fi album and particularly the song ‘Flavor of the Weak’ which had a great pop-rock sound, great hook and a cool lyric. The second album never really made an impact on me. They did release an third album but to be honest they lost me with that second one. 

This however is pretty good. If you like the nu-pop-punk-rock sound then American Hi-Fi has finally made an album that gets close to the debut. It may be a little light on the rock scale but this is a decided return to form. The songs are catchy, and the sound that had been pretty generic and unobtrusive on the last two releases has a rockier edge all of a sudden. The songs work better too and so as a whole it feels like a corner has been turned. Why that is, is anyone’s guess but I suppose the fact that ¾ of them have been acting as Hannah Montana’s backing band for a while now may have just given them that desperate push over the edge in a last bid for freedom?

Aside from the boy-band-bland ‘Where Love is A Lie’ (one for Hannah surely, if sales don’t go well) the album pretty much rocks. There are some cool songs from the standard pop-rockers like the title track to the more satisfying Butch Walker-like pop of ‘Acetate’ which is probably my favourite track. 

Others worth a mention include: the very Hi-Fi ‘Stargazer’ and the plaintive pop of ‘Lookout For Hope’. It’s good, but maybe not good enough to quit the day jobs?  

Mark