While “Hey There Delilah” still lingers on the radio, The Plain White T’s are back with a fresh sound on their newest release, Big Bad World. This is the band’s fourth album released with a label, and coming off their Grammy-nominated hit “Hey There Delilah,” fans will be expecting another smash from this Chicago-based fivesome. This is where the band might just fall short.
The band did make an effort to switch it up. Lead singer Tom Higginson said, “This time we decided, rather than punk that out and make it sound modern, we would record as though it could have been done by the Beatles or early Tom Petty. We got to a place where we sounded good live 300 nights a year, so we wanted to capture that.” According to their MySpace page biography, the band only used equipment and instruments made before 1970 to give it a truly vintage sound. They also recorded live, making their sound vulnerable to imperfections, which they believe add to the character of the album.
The band has a talent for creating cute love songs with upbeat, catchy melodies. A perfect example of this would be the song “1,2,3,4,” which has a Beatles-esque feel to it and is one of the catchiest tracks on the album. While pre-teen girls everywhere will be singing along, it will definitely not win any prizes for lyrical complexity, which has been a common problem for the Plain White T’s. “Natural Disaster”, for example, a song about a promiscuous, seductive groupie, uses the lyrics: “I can see you and me going all the way/ All night long/ And I don’t even really care what you’re after/ All night long/ As long as you keep going faster and faster.” The chorus is so damn catchy that it is hard not to join in when Higginson croons, “She’s so sexy/ I had to have her,” a line which likens the band to a group of teenage boys with raging hormones.
The band switches gears with “Sunlight,” written about guitarist Tom Lopez’s failing marriage. It is a hopeful song with melancholic, emotionally-charged lyrics that stand out as a ray of light against the blandness of the other tracks. The incorporation of string instruments in “Someday” and “Rainy Day” also make these songs stand above the rest, providing relief from the all-too-sanguine sound of the other songs.
The Plain White T’s have a knack for composing songs with easy melodies that make listening enjoyable. Their choruses are catchy and will have listeners humming long after the song is over. Yet the band did not reach the top of the charts with anything from their 2007 album Every Second Counts; they re-released “Hey There Delilah” from their 2005 album. This points to the fact that it will be extremely difficult for the Plain White T’s to recreate the huge hit they have had in the past. While fans will not be disappointed with Big Bad World, it will be up to the band to win over the rest of the listening population.
