MP3 REVIEW: Downer “The Worst Year of My Life”

                Once in a while, it is okay to venture out of your normal musical taste and go into something different.   While many of my musical selections can be under the genre of shoegaze, I also do like to step outside of that box every once in a while.   A good metal or hardcore album, for instance, is sometimes needed to liven things up a bit.

                Downer might possibly be the opposite of a metal or hardcore band, but they still offer something that I need to hear once in a while: pop punk emo music.    As both their band’s name and album title suggest, Downer carries a sound and lyrics of a more negative connotation, but on the whole they can actually help make you feel better by making you feel worse.

                A cross between Blink 182 and Lanemeyer, Downer has more of a focus on the offbeat pop punk that I remember being created back in the ‘00’s to stand out from the crowd of bands that all tried to emulate Saves the Day. 

                Between 1999 and 2005 or so, this would have been an album that I would have very easily fallen in love with.    Yet, here were are in 2013 and I’m still finding myself loving this.