Camping In Alaska was formed in 2010 in Alabama. They are a Midwest emo band.
According to their Spotify bio, “ Austin Davis and Jacob Stewart started writing music together
at age 15, drawing from influences of childhood-favorite bands such as Jawbreaker, Modest
Mouse, and Knapsack. They started their careers in Austin’s mom’s garage and soon began
playing DIY shows around North Alabama with the addition of Ben Cape and Jacob Hill. Their
breakout album about being in high school, Please Be Nice, was recorded in 2013 and quickly
took underground internet forums by storm ”.
This band is a part of the fourth wave of the emo genre, commonly known as emo
revival, which is characterized by the more twinkly aspects of math rock and less hardcore
influence.
I’ve seen a lot of love for this album and this band online, but I don’t get the hype. There’s
one okay song on this album, and it’s called c u in da ballpit.
I think my problems with this album start with my contention with the emo revival. I think the
genre ends up being pretty derivative and typically lackluster as a listening experience. It doesn’t
help that this album is supposed to be about high school and high school feelings. Its a boring
concept thats been done before, except better, and in this case just has lame cringey lyrics and
bad song structure. In emo, the reason it’s hard to branch out as a genre is because its done over
and over again. You can only be so sad and whiny about high school without losing an original
message. When I listen to this album I think man, somebody with zero emotional intelligence
and no personality definitely loves this project. It tries too hard to be emo.
My problems with this album mostly have to do with what it does conceptually, and vocally.
Typically when you create an album it’s either a collection of songs from a certain time period or
you go into it with a set theme. In this case they really must’ve just tried to do the same thing 7
times in a row and occasionally made a mediocre product. The instrumentation on the song
dragon ball z budokai tenkaichi 4, is pretty cool. There’s a lot of riffs that I found pleasing to the
ear. However, because the entire album sounds the same I gotta drop it too like a 2/10 because
I’m so bored coming into this song. Even though I enjoy the riff on this song and c u in da
ballpit, they are pretty derivative and copy what other bands have done better in the past.
The vocals on this project just straight suck. I can’t stand them and even on the song I like I
would prefer if they didn’t exist. The low bellowing screams on songs like Justin Farmer are just
jarring and I HATE, I HATE when they swear. It’s so corny and edgy and pretentious. The vocals
on this project lowkey disgust me and I im baffled by the fact people will call something like this
a masterpiece. It’s low-brow and trying to hard to be sad or weirdly poetic? There’s similar vocal
stylings of Why Cant I Be Snowing which is just way too long and changes too much to be
interesting.
The production on this entire project isn’t bad, its nothing crazy but I think this was
self-produced so I give props there. This entire album legit sounds the same. I think c u in da
ballpit is this weird middleground of playing to their strengths. Some people cherish this album
and cite is as one of the best in the genre, but I cant stand this style. This is like a 1/10.
Sources: https://open.spotify.com/album/6P2EO6BdtOMxXXoP8oiifP
