Review: Desoto Jones - Aurora

Label: Deep Elm Records

Released: February 18, 2008

At this point, emo is pretty played out, so even the genre's best bands struggle to be interesting. Desoto Jones is certainly among emo's best, but the real question is, do they transcend its confines. Oddly enough, emo has become a genre more concerned with technical skill than emotional release and Aurora is generally a good example of that. The band is tight and both rhythms and riffs are complex without being overbearing. At times, the guitar even soars. Where most emo bands look to the maudlin moodiness of the Smiths, Desoto Jones ties into 80s pop music (was that shades of A-Ha I heard in "Don't Fail Me?"). They use intricate layers that create real movement in the songs. Along with solid songwriting, these traits make Desoto Jones rise to the top of the emo game, but they still fail to break its confines until "Courtesy Call," the album's second to last track, where they go back and draw a bit of Pink Floyd's crisp psychedelia into their sound. If only they could do this throughout the album, it would be bigger than emo (much in the way My Chemical Romance were on their last album). As it stands, Aurora is just a very good album in a genre that's not very good anymore.

Rating: 6/10

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