This Providence – Who Are You Now?
Release Date: 03/17/2009
Fueled By Ramen
Rating: 2/5

Who Are You Now? is the 3rd studio release from Seattle based pop-rock quintet This Providence. The disc is a notable landmark in their six year career, which consists of two previously released albums and one EP that garnered polarized attention for their clear-cut Gatsbys American Dream-esque math-pop. Who Are You Now? is a notable shift in This Providence’s career as it sounds nothing like their previous efforts. Filled with radio-ready pop-hooks and onobtrusive cookie-cutter songwriting, it’s the obvious and ironic intentions behind this release that make it almost as offensive as the music is bad.

The album opener “Sure As Hell” kicks things off with the bar raised high. Stripped down, eerily ambiental and reverbed guitar layer the backdrop for Dan Young’s desperate pleading. Clocking in at just under two minutes, the song sounds a lot like Brand New a la Deja Entendu’s opener “Tatou”. From here on, the album takes a earsplitting nosedive. The remanining 40 minutes of Who Are You Now? play like an uninspired, watered down version of every bad song labelmates The Academy Is have ever written. The musical backbone that made previous efforts by these guys so tightly written and enjoyable is now gone in favor of flavorless pop jams (“This Is The Real Thing”, “Selfish”, “Chasing The Wind”) and re-recorded songs that weren’t-good-enough-for-a-full-length-but-we’ll-throw-em-on-there-anyway (“Sand In Your Shoes”, “My Beautiful Rescue”). Since the 2006 departure of bassist Phil Cobrea, This Providence just don’t seem to have the ability (or maybe the desire) to make the mathy driven pop-rock that made them so enjoyable in the first place. Instead, they chose to write and release Who Are You Now? which is not only the name of the worst album they’ve written to date, but a question that they should all seriously take some time to contemplate themselves.

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