Ah, one of my favorite bands. For much of high school, I considered As Tall As Lions to be my favorite band. Right in the middle of my sophomore year, they made the announcement that all music fans hope never comes: the band had (amicably) decided to break up.
Three and a half years later, I have drifted away from the band a bit. I have listened to their songs so many times that their music kind of lost its luster for me. Furthermore, the last album they released, called You Can’t Take it With You, never hit me as much as their self-titled release. Their self-titled release is easily in my top ten favorite albums all time.
Despite my distance from the band over the past couple years, I was still thrilled to hear that they were releasing a “Farewell Documentary” around Christmas time this past December. I bought the documentary today and watched it right away.
The documentary revolved around clips of their last performance as a band in New York City but also featured short interviews with the band and clips from the past. Watching them perform the songs that I knew so well and seeing the chemistry that is so easily apparent in the band made me fall in love with them again, so to speak. Seeing the chemistry was kind of a surprise for me — you’d think a band that was breaking up might not have such strong relationships.
That is part of what is so awesome about this band. They broke up because the band was too great of an experience. One of the band members described how the “high” you get from touring is addicting; trying to live a normal life simultaneously just falls short of touring. Thus, they decided to break up the band to become more rooted in reality and shift their focus to other important aspects of the life. Relative to other reasons for break ups, I would say this one is pretty cool.
Back to the music review.
Along with the documentary came an unreleased B-Side from their last album called “To the Sound”. For the first time in four and a half years, today I heard new As Tall As Lions. New to me, anyway. And it was great.
It is distinctively an ATAL song. Dan Nigro’s voice is really one of a kind. He has an incredible vocal range with a strong falsetto. The instrumentation in all of their music is just incredible, and this is a great example of that. They have mastered the art of backing vocals, led by bassist Julio Tavarez. Most bands don’t have a primary vocalist as skilled as ATAL’s secondary vocalist Tavarez, period.
The build up in this song is super powerful and makes me feel all the feelings I used to feel about this band. The build up is comparable to one of ATAL’s old songs called “Acrobat”, one of my favorite songs of all time, but I might argue with myself that this one is even better. I have never heard a better B-Side.
Needless to say, I like this song and I sincerely hope you all give it a chance. This band, even though they’re not together anymore, is worth your time. I haven’t said much about what kind of music it is, but I think that’s okay. How much I love this band should tell you that they’re worth looking into.
Strummer's Paradise 