StandBy – All For Nothing
Release Date: 29th January 2024
Thirty-five minutes, ten tracks (of which one is an acoustic reworking of one of the other nine), it’s a wonder sometimes how ‘the album’ is dwindling in popularity as a format. Surely we’ve all got half an hour to spend to listen to some art?! Well, even if you don’t, you’re going to want to make some for All For Nothing, the debut album from Los Angeles-based rockers StandBy.
With a combination of punky energy mixed with grungy rawness, StandBy are a band on the verge of something special. This is evidenced by album opener ‘All Your Fault’ and the immediate vibe isn’t particularly punky or grungy. There’s some 70s/80s glam rock vibe off the bat. A chugging riff that belies what is to come. Little more than 10 seconds in though the vocals kick in and while those riffs form the backbone of the track, it feels like a move to the 90s has occurred. A move that is rarely looked back upon.
The album itself is full of little moments of fun. Whether it be the opening bassline on ‘My Mother’s Lullaby’, the sort of bassline that has you wanting to dance before you’ve even realised what’s going on, or ‘Undefined Life Story’ and its pace-changing nature that initially at least takes you aback as it comes almost out of nowhere. It’s these moments that keep a style that, in truth, has been done before many times over the past few decades fresh and interesting.
Bringing us back in with hard rock in the form of ‘Your Own Demise’, the Silverchair comparisons that have plagued the band (not that being compared to Silverchair is in any way a bad thing) come to fruition. This isn’t a carbon copy though, more like if a classic rock guitarist was plonked into the band. One of the highlights of the album comes in the form of the vocals on ‘A New Place’. Here there’s a rawness that isn’t always felt throughout the rest of the album that is engaging. Add in a fun solo and what feels like a great opportunity to have a little dance when played live and we’re on to a winner.
Closing on the acoustic reimagining of ‘Do It Again’ gives the album even more of a nostalgic appeal. It’s reminiscent of albums from years gone by where a couple of minutes after that final track you get a little bit more. Here ‘Do It Again’ is given the Nirvana MTV Unplugged treatment and, if you’re listening to the album as the band intended, it is difficult to even remember how the track sounded first time around. A beautiful rendition that will have fans fighting over which version is the ‘better’.
Despite how easy to listen to All For Nothing is, this doesn’t feel like something you’ve heard before. It does, however, feel like something you’re going to listen to again and again. These LA rockers have put their name on the map here.
Don’t just stream All For Nothing though, get ordering it here!
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