New Music From The Crash Motive Streaming on MySpace

First, apologies to my normal readers for the Idol themed tangent this week. I'm past it now and giving you more normal posts. Thanks for indulging me.

Over the last week Newark, Delaware based band-that-more-people-need-to-know-about The Crash Motive released five new tracks that will comprise its new EP. The EP, entitled Just Because It Never Happened Don't Mean It Won't, is slated for a late summer release, and marks the second offering from the band in the last year.

The songs on Just Because It Never Happened Don't Mean It Won't (tangent: Yes, I am going to write out the full title every time, because I think it's fantastic.) are a continuation of the best material from their debut album Consequence. The Crash Motive are at their best when they're trying to fill an arena, and that huge rock sound is all over this new EP. They show off the slower, piano-based stuff a little bit as well, but even that's got a grander, more epic touch to it, drifting away from the mishmashed tracks of old. The biggest problem on Consequence was when TCM wasn't sure what they were doing on a given song, i.e. the tready "Home to Home". Everything on Just Because It Never Happened Don't Mean It Won't has a purpose, and it serves that purpose; nothing more, nothing less.

Opener "Walk All Over Me" starts things off with swagger, with a drum groove worthy of a fist pump and a chorus that mixes the attitude of Maroon 5 with the balls of early Green Day. "You Can't Know It All" lets frontman Derek Fuhrmann show off an awesome guitar line and another brilliant chorus. If TCM know how to do anything, it's how to write a chorus that'll get people screaming and jumping along (and maybe get an appearance on ESPN). "You Can't Know It All" has the potential to be a hell of a live track in the right circumstances. Easily the highlight of this EP.

"Heavy", oddly enough, brings in the piano and offers up the closest thing to a ballad that The Crash Motive will provide. Fuhrmann channels some Bryan Adams (in the best possible way), and the result is a solid power-pop track on par with anything else they've done. This may be the weakest thing on Just Because It Never Happened Don't Mean It Won't, but that's in no way a negative. "Don't Shut Your Eyes" is another slowed down track, with instrumentals in the same ballpark as Snow Patrol, and another notch in the uplifting alternative rock category. Closing out the EP is "The Sound Of Our Lies", which lyrically might be the best song The Crash Motive have ever written. They take the Maroon 5 falsetto formula and infuse it with some rock and roll, and make it far more palatable than the former ever have. I hope Adam Levine is taking notes.

Just Because It Never Happened Don't Mean It Won't is a big step forward for The Crash Motive. I can't wait to hear this in full CD quality instead of the craptastic MySpace streaming bitrate. TCM find their niche with this EP, and with any luck future albums will carry the same mix of swagger and emotion that they're showing off now.

Just Because It Never Happened Don't Mean It Won't is streaming on The Crash Motive's Myspace page right now, and will be released sometime this summer.

The Crash Motive on MySpace

==TJ==