Morning Glory

Poets Were My Heroes

Written by: PP on 02/01/2013 23:20:31

It has been nine years since the previous Morning Glory full-length, so you'll be forgiven for having slept in class and not knowing them. The band is of course primarily known as the side project for Leftöver Cräck's own Ezra Kire, who released three albums right after the switch of the millennium before going quiet all the way until 2012. That makes "Poets Were My Heroes" their fourth album, and it's a rather interesting listen.

Hearing someone mention 'punk rock opera', I won't blame you for thinking Green Day style megalomania with stadium size songs and all that stuff. But that is essentially what "Poets Were My Heroes" is, although the starting point is completely different. Instead of over-polishing and over-inflating their sound, Morning Glory experiment and expand the punk rock sound outside of its core ingredients, and explore different tempos and a variety of ideas that aren't exactly familiar in the genre. The title track is more of a progressive rock song complete with orchestral passages with punk style singing, for instance, and there are tracks with plenty of ambience and oddly echoing space on the record, which is practically the opposite of the usually so tight and fast manner that the genre manifests itself in. Hearing monumental trumpets and classic rock'n'roll style rearranged into a punk format on "March Of The Asylum" is an odd experience as well.

All of it is of course delivered through Ezra's halfway clean croon, where he demonstrates plenty of times that you can never go wrong with a big yeaaaaaaaaaaaah shout as your own chorus lyric. Generally, these more stereotypical punk songs are where Morning Glory are at their best, because they are by far the catchiest songs on the record and easiest accessible ones. But on occasion, such as on "Quemar Las Fronteras", the bigger-sounding tracks work their magic as well. I'll guarantee you haven't heard punk rock played like that before. And that's the core issue with reviewing this record: you just have no idea what to compare it to. It's most definitely a punk record with roots in folk and even hardcore in places, but no punk record is meant to sound this...big. Yet Ezra's feet are firmly attached to the ground, as this is a very personal album about his battle against heroin addiction. It's ambitious, but well-executed. Check it out if you want to hear punk rock re-defined.

Download: Everything's A Song (To Me), Quemar Las Fronteras, Divide By, Another Way
For the fans of: INDK, Leftöver Cräck, None More Black, ambitious punk
Listen: Facebook

Release date 28.08.2012
Fat Wreck Chords

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