Album Review: The Ready Aim Fire! - The Stranger

Starting out life as demos recorded in front man Dave Trautz’s bedroom, ‘The Stranger’ is the debut EP from California five piece ‘The Ready Aim Fire!’. Peddling a line of softly spoken emo that stands resolutely on the line between The Get Up Kids and Taking Back Sunday, the result is a set of six songs that would sit comfortably on the soundtrack of The O.C. This is not a good thing just in case you were wondering.

That’s not to say that ‘The Stranger’ is entirely without merit of course. Opener ‘I Thought I Heard Sirens’ succeeds in balancing the tender melodies of Trautz with some melodramatic drums and delicately picked acoustic guitar to great effect, while the glistening keys of ‘Zero Hour (No Bombs In Sight)’ provide the perfect backdrop for Trautz’s tortured vocals.

However, what quickly becomes evident is that ‘The Ready Aim Fire!’ is essentially a band wading knee deep through a stagnant genre. ‘Die Young, Get Free Drinks’ plods aimlessly along, dutifully rolling out cliché after cliché never even threatening to stray towards interesting, while at times the ‘woe is me’ bleeding heart lyricism veers dangerously close to the vomit inducing.

Severely lacking in anything even approaching an original idea ‘The Stranger’ is, while not being outwardly offensive, about as exciting as a night out at the library.

2/5

'The Stranger' EP by The Ready Aim Fire! available for free and can be downloaded here.

The Ready Aim Fire! on MySpace

Tom Weller