You know what? I'm getting bored with the same old routine. Every week I pick some classic album from the days of yore of rock n' roll (though some times not all THAT long ago) and I talk about it for a few paragraphs. This week we're going to do something a little different just to change things up a bit. This week we're talking about an album from a band I used to be in called Wake Up the Neighborhood.
Five years ago when I was a hopeful, optimistic lad with big dreams of becoming a big rock star, I was in a band with some buddies called Wake Up the Neighborhood. We mostly played locally, but every now and again we did get a little further out there. In 2013 though, I decided it was time for us to do an album. We spent the summer getting our original material all sorted out and then recorded it all in our drummer's basement. It took a while to do, but eventually we got the whole thing done and called it simply Wake Up the Neighborhood.
Wake Up the Neighborhood at least as far as I'm concerned has a few different styles thrown into it, but for the most part it's a cohesive bluesy classic rock influenced album. I actually had multiple people tell me they thought they were listening to something from the 70's when putting it on. I took that as a compliment. Regardless, it goes from loud, pound your walls, finger blistering rock n' roll to heartfelt ballads to moments of funk to folksy acoustic and beyond.
"Let's Wake Up the Neighborhood" is the first song I ever took part in writing that I actually took pride in. I had written other stuff before, but it always felt like amateur-ish crap to me. This song however made me want to pump my fist and shout "FUCK YEAH!". It's this mid-tempo, chugging, blues tinged party rock kind of song. The kind you blare through the loudest speakers you can find in your neighborhood so you can wake them up and get them to join in on the party. I was pretty proud of the guitar solo I did on it as well.
"Relapse" is one of the other old songs from that album that was already about 3-ish years old (give or take) by the time we laid it down. It's a clean guitar and piano driven ballad that talks about the first real heartbreak I ever had and how I felt like no matter how hard I tried to move on, even the smallest thing could make me crumble back down. I'm pretty proud of how it all came together for the most part. It knows how to set a mood and then go balls to the wall rock and then back again.
Wake Up the Neighborhood is far from being a perfect album by any stretch of the imagination. Years later I can hear all the fuck-ups and things that could have been done better, but I still treasure and cherish the album nonetheless. I am proud of what we as a team managed to accomplish. There are some solid tracks on it that I will still stand by even to this day. If you have a bit of time to kill, check it out for yourself and see what you think. Maybe even leave a comment about it if you feel like.
Wake Up the Neighborhood, by Wake Up the Neighborhood receives 3 out of 5 stars.
Track List:
1. Let's Wake Up the Neighborhood
2. S.O.L.
3. Relapse
4. Just Like This
5. Dirt
6. Keys to the Night
7. Dream
8. Crawl
9. Band Jam
10. Walk Away
Listen to the album (for free) on Bandcamp:
https://wakeuptheneighborhood.bandcamp.com/album/wake-up-the-neighborhood
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