The band’s previous releases, though well received by listeners, were too sophomoric for the music that the band could produce. We Have The Facts… proves that the band has finally found the maturity that would shape the music they wrote ever since.
However, the album is almost in a sense “too mature”, and this adulthood instead almost limits the sound that they can create. The first song on the album Title Track begins a in a low-fi style similar to that on Something About Airplanes, their first release, but halfway through the drums pick up the quality of the sound becomes superb, and there is a newfound enlightenment for what approaches soon on the album.
Unfortunately, the album never seems to expand nearly as much as it could. The rest of the songs are pleasant and well-written, but they all have a similar sound, similar beat, similar idea. It isn’t until “Company Calls” and the subsequent “Company Calls Epilogue” that the prowess of the band can be seen again, beginning with a fun and quick beat to a morose, powerful sound that is able to be created with just a faded acoustic guitar and Ben Gibbard’s soothe vocals.
The album has much more potential than was recorded, but it by no means a bad album, rather a timid one. |