VERSUS YOU - This Is The Sinking

13 songs
44:04 minutes
***** ***
Winged Skull

Bandpage

A good year ago, Eric Rosenfeld surprised with his new band Versus You and their debut album Marathon. He was known before mostly as local streetpunk number one, but all of a sudden, more moderate influences guided his writing skills. On their second album, the four-piece shows themselves matured and less punk sounding than ever before. They even charted with the catchy The Hotel Room on the commercial Eldoradio station, where they made it up to the second position. Does this mean that Versus You have sold out? Far from that! Instead, they show that also former punk rockers have the right to develop their style, and there is more to This Is The Sinking than just a hit single backed by a dozen uninteresting tracks. In fact, the album starts with possibly the band’s best track yet: Comme ci, comme ça, which overwhelms with fat guitar walls that have this typical Nineties grunge feeling with an unmistakable punk overtone though. The following Wrote You A Letter sees the band in a comfortably paced track, led by an acoustic guitar. Loyalty would have been a revelation, but the opening guitar sequence sounds just too much like their video track Crush from the debut album. Follows I Believe You It’s True, an acoustic guitar ballad, before the single hit The Hotel Room should get people’s ears wide open. But seriously, it’s a great track.

One more slower song and it’s time for three more rocking songs that never make it past the three minute limit. The Passing is another mid-tempo rocker with class, but towards the end, the CD is losing steam, with two of the three remaining tracks being acoustic ballads. Not that I don’t like them, but you’d think that Eric would keep those kind of songs mostly for his Communicaution alter ego.

This Is The Sinking is more mature than Marathon, but not essentially better, although not worse either. The new album definitely has the better songs, but also becomes a little uneven towards the end. It’s funny though how a band with definitive punk roots falls back to the Nineties and delivers something like a lost Nirvana album, at least on several songs. The production is excellent, especially in the guitar department, although vocals, bass and drums have their punch too. Old school punks will not need this album, but those who are into earthy Nineties alt rock definitely are the target audience for Versus You’s second record.