ALBUM REVIEW: The Cab – ‘Chasing Crowns’

In the 2010s heyday of emo-pop, The Cab had their charm, specifically as the guiltiest of guilty pleasures. Like, jailably guilty. There are sucralose tablets less saccharine than these guys, but if you ever feel like pretending you’re in One Tree Hill or something, the majority of Symphony Soldier will suffice. And if that would’ve been the end of the story, it’d be fine. The Cab could’ve stayed fixed in their nostalgia amber, safe from reassessment that could do more harm than good. But because, like so many pop-rock names of the era, they couldn’t leave well enough alone, there’s new music out there. And to that end…yeah, this is a bit crap.

It ultimately gets magnified by the decade-plus gap between albums. Symphony Soldier came out in 2012 and was the last full-length The Cab released before this. Thus, the readjustment comes hurtling forward at breakneck pace, resolutely shattering The Cab’s perceived ‘good’. Compare that to someone like Simple Plan, who similarly haven’t advanced their mindset in decades, but whose more regular release schedule has made it possible to acclimate towards. As for The Cab—a band once prized for their youth and the energy that brought to their music—them barely advancing in 14 years leaves some vicious cracks before we’ve even properly begun.

One more thing, too—18 tracks?! Are we having a laugh here?! Maybe The Cab want to make up for lost time, but this vastly overstretches what they’re capable of. Hell, the best bands of this scene would probably struggle to pull this off, so in what world do The Cab think they can? At least it could be worse; to the album’s credit, it doesn’t particularly drag or feel burdened at any point. But when you have to divvy up the already-threadbare motifs and themes of pop-rock returners over the best part of an hour, you’re left with the complete opposite problem—the substance is so lacking.

Okay, maybe wanting ‘substance’ is wishful thinking from the jump, but either way, the 18 tracks that The Cab have to play with aren’t used to their full potential whatsoever. The only one that gestures at personal growth and maturity is Hellraiser, Alex DeLeon’s ballad to his daughter that all of these seem obliged to write when they come back. Otherwise, it’s the usual beige smorgasbord of relationship ups and downs, cartoonishly oversold and age-inappropriate. Back From The Dead is especially nauseating in the latter case, just a few extra layers of plastic wrap and a Disney Channel connection away from being a Hot Chelle Rae song.

Occasionally, this broken clock is right, and some punched-up hooks on Locked And Loaded and Ih8yourgutz mean they start to resemble, like, a real band. But let’s be honest—they feel like flukes. The Cab are not equipped to turn this into something good, such is the nature of their repertoire. More in their wheelhouse are teeth-fittingly cloying ballads like Sweet Kerosene and My Universe, or featherweight, artificial alt-pop like Lost With You and Rollercoaster that (naturally) sound at least a decade past their use-by date. None of this is good, but it’s how you might believe The Cab would sound these days, anyway. The same can’t be said for the hollow stab at ‘intensity’ that is Pain, or the R&B cuts Every Little Lie and Wasted. (The former pulls off a Justin Timberlake impression somewhat well, but let’s not over-attribute any quality past that.)

By the time Chasing Crowns is over and has inevitably slipped your mind the second you switched it off, you’re almost left to wonder what the point of The Cab’s comeback even was. To the letter, it’s what you’d expect from a band of their vintage in this position; it’s a longer statement, but not a grander one. And while that’s not disappointing, per se (you had to have hopes in the first place for them to be dashed), it makes Chasing Crowns seem exceedingly pointless. Outside of a fairweather fling from past listeners, what does this actually intend to do? Convert new people into fans? Yeah, okay, sure…

18 tracks, though…bloody hell…

For fans of: Simple Plan, The Summer Set, We The Kings

‘Chasing Crowns’ by The Cab is released on 24th April.

Words by Luke Nuttall