Coming a full six years after
Spare Lead's 2001 debut album, the follow-up,
Let's Run Faster When We Have Lost Our Way, doesn't sound like the Portland, OR, emo kids spent much of the intervening years expanding their musical parameters or lyrical world-view. This is a fairly average, by the numbers emo album, on the punkier end of the style but not venturing into post-hardcore or screamo territory. Singer/bassist Evan White's ordinary, slightly whiny voice and forgettable lyrics, and the band's devotion to coloring within the lines, keep
Let's Run Faster When We Have Lost Our Way from sounding particularly appealing to many beyond the most doctrinaire emo fan. The strangest thing about the album, in fact, is that it sounds oddly retro, as if it should have been released a year or so after
Spare Lead's debut around the time that bands like
Rise Against and
Strike Anywhere were first hitting the national scene. In 2007,
Let's Run Faster When We Have Lost Our Way seems a bit dated. On the other hand, if
Spare Lead take another six years to release their third album, they should be just in time to capitalize on The Great Emo Revival of 2013. ~ Stewart Mason