Review : Daytrader - TWELVE YEARS

There has been a lot of anticipation building for this debut album from Daytrader. The 5 track EP ‘Last Days of Rome’ released early last year gave the band a certain amount of buzz and made people eager for more. There was one standout song on that EP that certainly got my interest, the 1st track ‘Kill My Compass’ was a definite highlight and got me excited to hear more.

That excitement and anticipation, for me, started to wane halfway through the 1st song on ‘Twelve Years’. ‘Deadfriends’ starts off well enough with a grungy, muted guitar riff that shows promise but that promise is broken come the chorus and the album never really gets any better. It’s all a bit safe, over produced and, to be honest, boring.

Daytrader are clearly not looking to be a game changer of a band, they’re not breaking any new ground which is, of course, fine. They play a radio friendly brand of emo rock which has been done many times before. To be a band like this and standout then you’ll need, like Jimmy Eat World have, some pretty decent songs, and its decent songs that this album is lacking. There is nothing that comes close to ‘Kill My Compass’. There are ok moments, 2nd song ‘If you need it’ has a resemblance to Hot Rod Circuit and the acoustic balladry of ‘Heard it in a song’ is nice enough. But not enough to make this an album worth revisiting.

In all, ‘Twelve Years’ is a disappointing record which I’m sure will still find them plenty of fans, but I’m just gonna stick with my Jimmy Eat World records.

‘Twelve Years’ is released on the 8th of May on Rise Records.