Review Saturday: Cymbals Eat Guitars - "Dancing Days"

Cymbals Eat Guitars

"Dancing Days"

Pretty Years

Synderlyn

Dancing is often regarded as a form of showing someone's blitheness and happiness. It's something that you'll never correlate with despondency, even though you may suffer from the dancing mania like in 1518. With that being said, in the hands of Cymbals Eat Guitars, the word that beams happiness as much as dancing can be turned into a track that is somber and evocative, inducing old memories of good old dancing days. 

After two strong albums, Lenses Alien and LOSE, the departure of their old rocky and ferocious persona in Pretty Years, their fourth album and their most experimental one, is pretty much noticeable. In Pretty Years, they incorporate electric sound, resulting some songs that make you awkwardly dance, such as "Close" or "Have A Heart". But, in the middle of the album, you'll find the crown jewel of Pretty Years. "Dancing Days" may easily fit in LOSE as it invokes languorous atmosphere as much as "Jackson". But, it also fits the experimental noise that they try to implement here. "Dancing Days" itself is a rock-ballad, and as you can expect from a rock band that goes ballad, it sounds sweet and vulnerable. "Spring, the days lengthen/ the block is blossoming drifts of pink petals," D'Agostino describes his state of desolation that happens amidst the beautiful days of spring. With his shaky voice, D'Agostino continues in whisper, "Can't shake the feeling/ that I lost something precious/ my heart's finally fixed." between the slow beat of Andrew Dole's drum that sounds hypnotic as it reminisces us of our old good days. As D'Agostino loudens up and gains much confidence and courage, the track climaxes on the most sing-along chorus that Cymbals Eat Guitars has ever written, "Goodbye to my dancing days/ goodbye to the friends who fell away/ goodbye to my pretty years." The second part of the song couldn't be more tragic when D'Agostino goes cathartic, where his jamais vu makes him unable to recognize anything and his feeling goes numb as the impact of goodbye finally hits him. Farewell, and especially a farewell to our beloved one, is always an emotional experience, and "Dancing Days" perfectly captures the sense of it.