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Album Details

• Artist: When Summer's Gone
• Album: December
• Label: Indie
• Year of Release: 2009
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: Todd Levinson Frank on 2009-11-12
• Viewed: 160 times

Upon first listen to December, the new debut CD from When Summer's Gone, track 1 ("Funeral for a Friend," but not the Elton John song) comes on and you figure it's gonna be another solo acoustic affair full of sad-bastard songs with enough pop sensibility to make Dave Graziani the next David Gray or John Mayer. But then they kick out the jams.

Most of the rest of this 8-song disc rocks as hard as something you might hear from Disturbed or Alice In Chains, though my personal favorite is the mid-tempo mood piece "Echoes" that closes out the set. It's a concise group of songs that benefits from resisting the trap of filling all 80 minutes of a CD and ending up bloated. While the contrast between the acoustic opener and the rest of the disc was a bit jarring at first, it really ends up feeling like an actual album that's one artistic statement, if not quite a concept album.

As Graziani explains in the band's bio, "From a songwriting perspective, I created the album as a chronicle featuring a protagonist that helps carry along the plot as the emotional intensity increases. There's a loose story arc to it, and the idea was to arrange the tracking so that the songs connect together, while at the same time they can be listened to and appreciated on their own."

Musically, at times it seems as if this Western-Pennsylvania based duo isn't quite sure what kind of band they want to be: nu metal rockers or more radio-friendly Creed-style hit makers. But, to their credit, they seem capable of doing either or both.

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