I’ve never been completely sold by Anberlin. Having listened to their older records you would expect them to have finally refined their sound and produced an album full of solid gold hits. Instead, ‘Cities’ is more of the same; a shining light in places but remotely dull and predictable in others. And it’s this inconsistency which will ultimately blight the band’s ascent into the emo-rock bigger leagues. Put simply, there are better bands – and better albums – than the ones Anberlin continually put out.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some good songs here. ‘Inevitable’ is a gem, as are ‘Adelaide‘ and ‘Godspeed’, but I wonder if they come across so well simply because the production is so lovely and crisp. In places Anberlin sound simply drab, with choruses failing to take off and sounding as flat as a pancake. Then another song comes along with plenty of love and charm, such as ‘Alexithymia’, and the listener is left baffled as to how a band can go from great to not so great in the space of three minutes. Anberlin play a sound coined by a generation, and sadly for them they’re not so much at the forefront, buy jostling for a position in the middle of the pack.