Retro Review: Transit- Listen & Forgive

(click here to purchase this album)

With this week being very slow in terms of album releases, Keep Calm and Carry On has decided to take a look back at an album that wasn’t reviewed because of the blog’s hiatus last year.  With that said, I have decided to take a look back at Transit’s third full-length album and Rise Records debut Listen and Forgive.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say it. If a Most Improved Band award existed for last year in music, Transit would be the biggest slam dunk since Michael Jordan in Space Jam. The Massachusetts band took huge steps forward from their last full-length Keep This to Yourself, adapting a completely different and wholly more original sound.  Joe Boynton and Tim Landers learned how to play off each other’s unique voices perfectly and create new, perfect harmonies. Guitarists Torre Cioffi and Landers lay down some of the most original twinkly guitar lines and Daniel Frazier is probably the most underrated drummer in the scene (see “Cutting Corners” and realize why Frazier is an absolutely insane drummer; those rolls are perfection)

 

The first thought that comes to mind when listening to opening track “You Can’t Miss It (It’s Everywhere)” is that Transit could very well fit in with the 90’s Midwestern emo trend pioneered by Captain Jazz and American Football. In fact, Joe Boynton has much the same inflection as Mike Kinsella at times. One trait that Transit seems to have pulled from these early emo songs the most is the "devil is in the details" approach to recording. The band seems to add little embellishments that make each song feel just a little tiny bit more cohesive. the tiny guitar string slide in the first verse of "Long Lost Friends"  acoustic guitar backing on most of the song, which helps the overall sound become more fleshed out, the lower register vocals that Boynton records on "I Think I Know You" to provide a three-part harmony with his higher register vocals and Landers' middle ground. Though these nuances may never come to the forefront, repeated listenings to the album makes them more than evident to the listener.


The hints of Transit's past sound are slim, but still evident in the intro of “Cutting Corners” and a few other small moments of the album. But when the band wants to slow things down, they seem even more in their element. The simple riff and drum beat of the title track conjure up thoughts of summer and Fourth of July fireworks perfectly.

That actually seems to be Transit’s greatest ability as a band, the heartfelt lyrics and gorgeous soundscapes give the listener an impression of what Joe Boynton is seeing and feeling. The chorus of “Skipping Stone” is especially heart-wrenching, as Boynton sings “And every memory is like a skipping stone, you’ll never understand how long it took, the tides to bring them back to us.” The song is a tribute to moving on but still wanting to go back to a simpler time: a perfectly written nostalgic anthem. 

This nostalgic theme can be seen in several of the other songs on the album. “I miss the breeze of the summer air, the sunlight against my skin, do you remember it? We all felt more alive,” Boynton sings on “Asleep at the Wheel”.  This recurring feeling of wanting to go to a past time is one of the aspects of Listen & Forgive that makes it so special. That, and the fact that it is just a perfectly written batch of songs by a band that may be the best young band in the scene right now.

Bottom Line: When critics look back in ten years at Transit’s career, they will look at Listen & Forgive as the band’s Tell All Your Friends or Deja Entendu, the album that changed the game for the band and the on that the fans will continually compare each new release to. Listen & Forgive is, with good reason, an instant classic.

Recommended if you rock: This, and this, and this, and this