Ryan's Hey Rosetta Review

I'll have to admit that it took me awhile to warm to this album. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with it on a technical level; it's clear from the first listen that this was a polished, professionally put together album, but it left me feeling cold when I first heard it. If anything, I think that it seemed somehow inauthentic; the songs I was hearing were songs of experience, and lead singer Tim Baker sounded too young and too innocent to be singing them.

After a few more listens, though, I had an epiphany: this is not an album about being experienced, even if a song like 'I've Been Asleep for a Long Long Time' might suggest that it is. Rather, it's actually an album about feeling like you've got things figured out, but then going out into the world and realizing how little you actually know, and then using that information to build a more realistic view of the world. That's a very subtle difference, and it's a mark of the band's songwriting ability that they're able to work so much into the album's themes.

If you listen to the album from front to back, you can hear a pattern start to develop throughout tit; the first couple of tracks are upbeat and slightly pop-ish, and then the album gets quieter for a bit, before coming back stronger and more assured of itself by the end. The fact that the same pattern reproduces itself on the level of individual songs, especially in 'Tired Eyes' and 'Holy Shit', leaves the listener with the impression that this is no accident, but rather something done intentionally, and it's something that resonates with that thematic experience. Overall, one gets the impression that Hey Rosetta wasn't the same band at the end of the album as they were when it began.

Lyrically, Into Your Lungs is a very strong album, but again, it is such in a very subtle way. There's aren't many individual lyrics that you can point at and say “That's a great song lyric” to show how forceful they are (with the possible exception of one line from 'A Thousand Suns' - “May every breath you breathe be built around sacred things”). Rather, it's one where Baker creates these introspective lyrical landscapes. By themselves, they would sound somewhat overly romantic, but the rest of the band fills the songs out, providing a more somatic balance to the lyrics. There are plenty of great hooks and riffs throughout the album, but they're all there in a way that serves the lyrical content, rather than trying to overpower it. That balance reminded me of Counting Crows' early material, although it also fits in quite well with a lot of the greats of the Canadian indie scene, like Sloan or the Weakerthans.

If anything, the subtlety that the album displays might hurt it with some audiences, as a casual listen won't necessarily bring out all the textures of the band's sound. Put on some headphones, though, find some time to listen to the whole album beginning to end, and you won't be disappointed.