Armor For Sleep

There was a time when Armor For Sleep were a pretty cool band. Sure, Punk Planet probably never dug them but while all their emo peers were adding a second vocalist to provide throat-tearing screams, tuning their guitars to D and finding a swoopy-haired keyboard player to aid in their dance rock breakdowns, they just kept sounding like a modern, poppy incarnation of Sunny Day Real Estate, albeit with a lot of Thursday spins on their iTunes "Maximum Emocore!” playlist. Smile For Them, Armor’s third full-length album, utterly fails to rein in the band’s boring pop tendencies, always kept so well in check on past records. The result is a massive-sounding, hella dull record about some whiny shit that no one but singer Ben Jorgensen probably cares about. It’s kind of like a double-time version of Staind. So if "Outside” or "It’s Been Awhile” really spoke to you, but you also like Boy Sets Fire, welcome to heaven.