Funny thing about first impressions. Sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong. Looking at the cover of “Are You Prepared?” by My Silent Bravery and I immediately thought this would be Christian rock or some similarly devotional genre.
Instead, the album turned out to be a collection of songs stamped with the mark of one man and his fruit flavoured laptop. All the signs are there with a distinctly plastic, crudely programmed feel to all the songs and some remarkably crude and unnecessary vocal processing to further reinforce that opinion and, perhaps, also to disguise a lack of confidence in the singer’s voice (it would appear that the name in the frame behind this band is one Matt Shwachman).
The lyrics don’t really suggest much in the way of inspiration either being more like the work of a jobbing songsmith writing music for montages in some daytime television drama series. The best song here was “Runaway” and that’s just about all that I have to say about this album.