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Guster’s new album, “Ganging up on the Sun,” shows the band definitely wants to grow musically and emotionally. Unfortunately, what they want to grow into eludes the listener playing the record, as I’m sure it eluded them while making it.
Few albums are as “emo” as Guster’s 2003 effort “Keep it Together,” which is not necessarily a bad thing. The album possesses a lot of singable, catchy acoustic tracks. But it is the kind of album that a band should grow from, as the deepest issues that the album ponders involve getting dumped, or the fear of coming home from college.
“Ganging up on the Sun” does represent something of an evolution for the band. The trio set aside their acoustic guitars at times in favor of a heavier, beefed up sound on songs like “The New Underground” and “One Man Wrecking Machine.” Lyrically, however, the album is all over the map, as lead singer Ryan Miller is obsessed with feigning his own complexity with lines like “To the dreamers go the dreams, but the leaders have the lead, it’s a frightening, frightening thing.”
To Miller’s credit, he possesses a hypnotic voice that can make even the most pretentious of lyrical moments seem captivating. His voice is well used at moments, with the spooky, tantalizing, “Ruby Falls” and the albums optimistic closer, “Hang On,” serving as evidence.
On the whole, the album never really comes together as a cohesive collection of songs. Guster never quite seems to know where they are going, but just they want to leave where they’ve been. For their next record, I hope they decide on a destination.
-Dennis O’Neill
