San Diego based band Almost Monday have finally released their debut album Dive. Despite being active since 2015, their artistic growth proves to be more in the direction of proficiency rather than creativity.
While admittingly well-polished, Dive’s clean, fun-loving sound manifests into a sludge of blandness as opposed to anything infectious or enjoyable. Whether it be the uninspired and childish hooks, the vapid production choices, or the simplistic lyrical matter, Almost Monday fails to cohere an album that transcends the endless pile of indie slop manufactured for commercial interests rather than genuine listening.
At a brief 28 minutes, Almost Monday demonstrates how even at such trim lengths, they still struggle to compose ideas that can be differentiated amongst each other. Strongly influenced by bands such as AJR, The Strokes, and Arctic Monkeys along with the broader indie rock and garage rock revival scene, Almost Monday reiterates the tired tropes of these bands and genres with little unique input. Despite being their chance to establish an identity, Almost Monday seems content making their debut a cheesy simulacrum of better works.
The centerfold of Dive is its hooks, which can admittedly be somewhat catchy like with the songs Is it Too Late and Never Enough, but even these fail to impress beyond being a momentary earworm to be forgotten later. Each chorus follows the typical pseudo-indie-troping of heavier guitarwork, anthemic vocal lines, vague musing of non-descript relationships, and melodies that have long been dried out. At Dive’s most substantive level, it only appeals to melodic convention while failing to build any concrete or stand-out musical ideas.
The core of this charmless indie sound can be traced largely to the production choices of the album. While possessing a dynamic mix where instruments and vocals line up in a cleanly orchestrated spatialization, this proficiency does Dive more of a disservice than anything else. In contrast to the band’s attempt at a quirky and characteristically “indie” sound, the cleanliness and overt detail of the mix emphasizes an artificiality that dilutes any possible emotional resonance. Every trope of fuzzy guitars, bouncy basslines, distorted vocals, and anthemic choruses seems to exist more at the level of simulation; that is, all the pieces are there, but the album in totality lacks the warmth that makes albums like Is This It by the Strokes so impactful. There is no edge, roughness, or weight; instead, everything floats in an exhaustive “perfection” that makes even the sparse use of distortion feel smooth and weightless.
Lyrically is where Dive shows its hand most. Most tracks here focus on romanticized depictions of love yet lack any sense of romance. Tidal Wave attempts to reflect on love during one’s youth and the memories made during that time but lacks any specificity from which something truly resonate or relatable would emerge. Instead, Almost Monday muse over listening to their “favorite song” and a series of absent-headed details that appear to only line up because they rhyme rather than construct any clear image other than the “perfect” image of a tropical resort advertised on television. Similarly, Never Enough fixates on how the singer fails to express his admiration for this girl as much as he should, which defers to empty expressions of how perfect she is that oozes with cheesiness unguarded by any self-awareness. The only tension that rises out of the album are underdeveloped allusions to emotional distance from this recurrent love interest that don’t amount to any serious turmoil and are completely washed away by the insistence that the vocalist is totally in love with this interest.
The themes of love and growing up are coupled with a broad care-free philosophy that runs through the album. Tidal Wave and Life Goes By muse about the importance of letting go and making memories in the present. While reasonably innocuous, this orientation constitutes the thematic emptiness of the record. Every hint at conflict, every indication of emotion, is scraped clean by this recurrent flippancy towards everything. Dive lacks any clear investments or emotional stakes, opting for vague musing about hanging out at the beach centered around a songwriting structure of listing things rather than narrating true experiences. Dive is an advertisement for youth and love; it consists of textureless descriptions and images of generic experiences and sensations that don’t feel remotely relatable or even human.
Every component of Dive orbits around a certain lack. While presenting a clean surface of feel-good lyrics and hooks, nothing exists beyond that surface. While the mix is dynamic, thematically, compositionally, and emotionally, everything is flattened into a smooth surface that requires little penetration to cut through and find nothing at its center. It’s accessible, catchy enough, inoffensive, but because of this, belongs more in a commercial or a montage sequence of a B-movie; not anyone’s personal listening. Almost Monday has a workable level of skill and production value, but for any of that to matter, they need to commit themselves to taking the risk of being bare and substantive: taking bold artistic moves and honing on more detailed and earnest subject matter. Behind their clean presentation, they must put something, anything at all.
En masse, Dive gets a 1/5.
