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Third Eye Blind
Ursa Major
(Megaforce)
Releasing: 18 August (US)
Stephan Jenkins clearly has some things he’s needed to get off his chest over the last six years and to the fortune of the fans, the silence has been broken today and expressed in the form of Third Eye Blind’s fourth album Ursa Major. But, Jenkins and company have come back from hiatus with some aces in hand: incorporating some new instruments and adding depth both musically and lyrically.
They’re kept with their edgy lyrics, with songs like their first single, “Don’t Believe a Word” Jenkins pens, “We like thugs when they attack / And we like crime when it’s black on black.” Or the softer, acoustic “One in Ten”, about a woman who doesn’t return the singer’s feelings of love, primarily because she’s in love with a woman: “Love doesn’t come in perfect packages / That means I qualify.” With lyrics like this, in addition to new music build-ups and chorus crescendos that blast through your speakers, it’s hard to not not drum on the steering wheel. Or take a listen to “The Dao of St. Paul” where the band opted for a gospel choir to round the end of song, and album, out.
But for the not-so-die-hard, you have songs like “Summertown” or “Waterlanding” that deeply resembling the memorable hooks and catchy lyrics that the popular consensus drank up and imbibed in 1997. The band, has not forgotten what it takes to make a worthwhile CD, and if anything, they’ve only improved their craft over the last six years.
