California's In the Red always fell under the radar to me until I decided to listen to vocalist/guitarist, Mike Hale's latest solo album, Lives Like Mine. I really liked this album and his other solo work and was impressed enough with his acoustic outing to give In the Red's sophomore record, Volume 2 a chance. Unfortunately, I was let down as it appears that Hale is stronger by himself rather than in his band.
Coming off a decent first album, In the Red have decided to branch out a little more on Volume 2, and not in a good way. Their sophomore record shows the band going for a more rock approach, and when I say that I mean mainstream rock approach. It appears that they seem to have stripped back their sound a lot. Taking away a lot of the emotional punk anthems that were found on their first album and replacing them with a dull guitar tone and sleep-inducing ballads backed by cliche melodies. Volume 2 almost sounds like something that blends in with the whole post-grunge sound that has been overplayed to death. I'm usually not one to hate on bands for adapting a more mainstream sound, so if In the Red want to make a radio-rock style record, then that's fine as long as the record is good, and Volume 2 is definitely not a good record whatsoever.
Finding the positives of this record is almost as hard as listening to it. Hale's usual scratchy voice is still present on here but it blended in a lot better with an acoustic environment than the boring rock guitar melodies used on here. There's a couple of memorable choruses like on the opening track, "Unlaced" that gives the album a quick start. "Something Shocking" is also a fairly decent ballad in comparison to the rest of the album. It's a little generic but not as much as the rest of Volume 2. I think the biggest problem with this album is that it all just sounds very contained and lifeless. The band takes absolutely no risks or dangerous steps on this album and uses the same monotonous formula on just about every song. Not to mention the lyrics being very uninteresting compared to their other work. The production of this album is very irritating, as well. Everything sounds like it was lowered down to the absolute minimum and adds to the record sounding even more boring.
You can mark Volume 2 down in the disappointment column for me. It's especially frustrating when you've heard their debut album and Mike Hale's solo material and know that they're capable of a lot more than this. Going in a mainstream direction works for some bands but it definitely doesn't work for In the Red if they continue to use this formula on their future recordings. My only hope is that their next album will not be as boring, overproduced, flat, and predictable as Volume 2.
