Rating: 3.5/5

Ride (“This Is Not a Safe Place”) is certainly not a new band and their new album “Interplay” was good. 

The first track off “Interplay” is titled “Peace Sign.” This felt very ‘80s, but in a good way. The chorus featured a bit of a split harmony, which was cool to hear right off the bat. The chorus was catchy and overall this was a great way to start the album. 

Next up is “Last Frontier.” This was a little bit slower than “Peace Sign,” which brought the pacing down too early in the album. This certainly was not a bad song, but placed poorly in the tracklist.

“Light in a Quiet Room” is the most interesting track on the album. It builds pretty consistently throughout the six minutes until eventually everything comes in full. It feels as if the band were going to build us up forever and not pay it off, but the build was well worth it. 

The best track off the album is “Monaco.” This was a really easy song to enjoy. The lyrics were nothing special, but the instrumental was fun and upbeat. The chorus was catchy and the song was not too long. 

“I Came to See the Wreck” is next. This is the best lyrically written piece on the album. The bridge was solid and we hear the lead singer show off his vocal range.

Track no.6 is “Stay Free.” This is a really neat song. An acoustic guitar starts things off to grab your attention. We then get a lot of different sounds to go along with his voice, but the guitar riff is consistent through it. The song ends the same way it started, with the lone sound of the acoustic guitar. 

Another great track off this album is “Last Night I Went Somewhere to Dream.” Do not get me wrong, the lyrics in this one sucked, but the instrumental was great. The song also features those aforementioned harmonies, which hide the mediocrity of the lyrics. 

“Sunrise Chaser” and “Midnight Rider” will get lumped together because they sound the same. One could assume that based on the song titles that maybe they would reflect each other in some way. They did not. It knocked my expectations because it felt like the band could have done something really cool with the order of the record. Instead, both of these songs felt like a lot of the songs from earlier in the album.

“Portland Rocks” does exactly that: it rocks. This was the “heaviest” song on the album for sure, but it is not knock-your-socks-off by any means. Ride took no time before the drums and vocals came in, a nice way to knock the listener back into the album.

If you are ever told you have seven minutes left to live, do not take that time to listen to “Essaouira.” There is no reason why this song needs to be seven minutes long. It goes nowhere and does not add anything to the album. If anything, it takes away. This is one of the most skippable songs I have ever heard and stands out as a bad song on a good album.

“Yesterday is Just a Song” ends things; it is effectively noise.

Image by Mekkel.Richards via Wikimedia