Wednesday, August 3, 2011

The Copyrights - North Sentinel Island

The Copyrights are one of the best bands in the modern wave of pop punk. They make use of multiple vocal harmonies, repetitive chants where verses usually appear and infectious choruses that are usually chanted as well.  They sound kind of like the Dopamines. Or more accurately, the Dopamines sound kind of like them. The Copyrights formed in either 2004 or 2005, I don't know off hand (I was wrong, Wikipedia says 2002) and went through a period of releasing something every couple of months (be it an EP, a full length or a split album). They've been pretty quiet for a few years, releasing some splits in early 2009 but for the most part focusing on side projects like Dear Landlord and The Heat Tape.

What I love about the Copyrights, though, is that they're essentially the Bad Religion of pop punk. All of their releases sound essentially the same, yet there's something about each one that still makes it completely distinguishable from the rest.

So what can be said about the new Copyrights album, North Sentinel Island, that isn't just something along the lines of "it sounds like Learn the Hard Way meets Make Sound"?

I think there's some sort of underlying theme
about getting away from home or something...
I'm not really sure, to be honest. But at the same time, when it comes to a band like the Copyrights, that might as well be the best way to describe an album. It starts off with Trustees of Modern Chemistry, with a heavy (relatively) riff that seems to be lifted from 90's alt rock and even contains a sense of humor when the band "messes up" (just listen to it). The album then goes to the lead single (I think, it had it's own EP anyway) Crutches, which is classic Copyrights. The album only gets better with the strong bass in Hard-Wired to the chanting of "I'm not homesick; I'm sick of home" line in Expatriated Blues to the energy of The New Ground Floor which would have fit right it at home on Learn the Hard Way.


It's hard to explain why an album is awesome when you've already said it sounds like the last one. Fans of the previous material will know what this means, but newcomers may be lost. So, if you're a fan of catchy, energetic music, I'll say this: just listen to it already.

The Copyrights aren't really breaking new ground here. But broken ground can be difficult to walk on, so why would you want to break it in the first place?

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