About Me

Hey, my name's Jesse. I'm 17, I'm a senior in high school, and I'm really into music. This blog is all about my interest in punk music, specifically my interest in the Punk Goes Pop albums.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Compilation Album Comparison Review (Punk Goes Pop 3 & 4)


Over the past couple of weeks, I have evaluated and reviewed many different areas of judgment in the way the music on the albums Punk Goes Pop 3 and Punk Goes Pop 4 differ from one another and are presented in general. They both include a wide spread of differently faceted artists on these compilation albums. Both albums include many bands that would otherwise not be suspected as interested in recreating hit Pop singles. The Punk Goes… series of compilation albums pull together a wide range of different genres that studios find that Punk bands do well in covering the top Pop singles of current time periods. The Punk Goes Pop in particular has grown the most and caused a rising interest for many upcoming bands to try their hand at showing their skills at remaking already popular music.
            As my criteria of judgment for the two albums, I had compared the two on the areas of: Progression of Sound; Type of Vocals: clean, grunge, rough, screaming, etc.; Types of Percussion: drumset, keyboards, synthesizers, or various percussion; Quality of Sound; and Artists Featured on the Compilation Albums. The first area in which I had compared the two albums had been the difference of artists that were featured on the albums. Punk Goes Pop 3 had featured Breathe Carolina; Woe, Is Me; Artist vs. Poet; The Word Alive; Of Mice & Men; Family Force 5; Mayday Parade; Miss May I; Cute Is What We Aim For; The Ready Set; We Came as Romans; Sparks the Rescue; Asking Alexandria; and This Century. All of these bands range from different sub-genres of Punk, but together, on the Punk Goes Pop 3 Album, they created similar sounds and have created a new type of sub-genre, Punk Pop. Whereas, on the Punk Goes Pop 4 album the artists that were featured had been Tonight Alive; Woe, Is Me; Pierce the Veil; Sleeping With Sirens; The Ready Set featuring Mod Sun; Chunk! No, Captain Chunk!; Go Radio; For All Those Sleeping; I See Stars; Allstar Weekend; Silverstein featuring Cam Hunter of Down With Webster; A Skylit Drive; and The Downtown Fiction. These bands as well are of differing sub-genres of Punk music, but they do not create a similar sound. The Punk Goes Pop 4 album had shown very different styles of Punk bands throughout the album.
            The next area of comparison that I had judged the albums upon had been the progression of sound throughout the different types of songs on the albums. On Punk Goes Pop 3, many of the songs had featured a more laid back, comfortable type of progression in their sound. They had contained a very steady, moderate tempo in the beat that had been driving the song along. However, on the Punk Goes Pop 4 album, the progression of many of the songs had been quite up tempo and had given me more of a feel of adrenaline and had caused me to feel more pumped up. Both albums had featured a bit of both types of progression based on the original tempo displayed in the Pop singles original style.
Another area I had reviewed between the two albums had been that of the type of percussion that the artists had chosen to display in their sound. For the Punk Goes Pop 3 album, many of the band had chosen to use the basic types of percussion such as a drumset, an occasional piece with a keyboard, but I don’t believe I heard any synthesizers or other types of percussion. On the other hand, Punk Goes Pop 4 had featured a wide range of percussive sounds throughout all the tracks. Many of the songs had featured drumset, keyboards, synthesizers, and even concert types of percussion such as slapsticks and tambourine.
I as well had compared the two albums on the types of vocals that they had displayed throughout the different tracks. On Punk Goes Pop 4, the artists had used a mix of clean, rough, screaming, acoustic, and grunge vocal styles. They all often included two vocalists that had chosen to display different styles of vocals between the times they had entered to sing a part of the piece. As well, on the Punk Goes Pop 3 album, the artists had used the styles of clean, rough and screaming vocal styles. However, they had not did not use more than one vocalist very often, and the styles had remained consistent throughout any different vocalists within a song.
Lastly, I had judged the criteria of the quality of sound produced by the different albums. On both albums, the use of auto-tuning and editing can sometimes be heard by the listener, if the listener is being a critical listener. Overall though, the quality of the sound produced by all of the artists on the two albums had been top notch and had featured each artist quite well in their abilities as Punk musicians. The acoustic quality in some of the tracks though had given the most sense of praise to a listener who had been truly looking to find the amazing stylistic abilities that a punk band can display in attempting to recreate another genre of music.
Overall, both albums are amazing and give an amazing insight into the abilities of the Punk musicians of our time. The ability to change one’s style of music is phenomenal when they range so far as to change from Punk to a revised version of Pop. Each artist on these albums had shown a great deal of musicality and extraordinary musical ability. To all those out there looking to find an amazing display of Punk music and it’s relativity to other styles and genres of music, these albums are a great way to find such.

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