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Fall Awake – Beautiful Come Undone

Fall Awake - Beautiful Come Undone

It’s the way that a person reacts to grave disappointment for the first time that will predict a lot of their successes and failures in life. Most of us learn quickly how to shrug it off, brush it under the blanket, and replace it with something else. Some of us are cursed and will never be able to recover fully. 

Those looking to become great artists, on the other hand, view these first disasters with fascination. They jolt down every detail and inspect it as if running an autopsy. They have a bird-eye view of the game of life. It’s fascinating to see artists react to the first great disappointment. 

This is what alt-rock band Fall Awake’s album “Beautiful Come Undone” sounds like. These are eleven short studies on the idea of decay, on the beauty and tragedy of it all. 

That may be a heavy subject to tackle but Fall Awake don’t lose their cool. Album opener “Softly” with its live rehearsal feel recalls the mix of misery and enthusiasm that the 90s grunge albums possessed. 

Fall Awake - Beautiful Come Undone

And like the grunge albums of that fabled era, a quick read through the song titles will give you a good idea of where the songwriters’ minds are at. There are songs “Funeral For the Sun” and “Sugar Sour” that play with alt-rock loud-soft dynamics. 

Still, Fall Awake’s greatest strength doesn’t lie in its ability to conjure up visions of alt-rock heroes to the devoted fans looking for folks to fill those roles. What the band does best is convey emotion, but never let that soak them to the bone. 

On songs like the Bush-resembling “Otherside of Down” or “Dissolving”, the band has a knack for diving in and out of sound pits, coordinating every step of the way. Like the best grunge songs, it doesn’t matter if you know what’s coming next if the band makes the hit strong enough. 

There’s also the matter of the vocals. They’re convincing and not in a “he can hit notes like Layne Staley” kind of way. Singer Austin Gray belongs to a school of singing that involves more raw emotion and theatricality than your typical hard-rock vocalist. 

On the mellow parts of “Every Dog Bites” or Smashing Pumpkins-like grunge-ballad, “Sign,” Gray makes it sound as if he’s singing to himself and using it as some kind of therapeutical device. In fact, the singer is at his best when it doesn’t sound as if he’s trying to approximate what audiences may want to hear from him. 

Where does it all leave us? The album closer, “Good to be You”, with its mix of strummed acoustic-electric guitars, lead guitar hero lines, and twitchy vocals, provides the conclusion to the study. Things fall apart; it’s scientific, and we need just the right people on the job to write down the findings. 

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About author

Eduard Banulescu is a writer, blogger, and musician. As a content writer, Eduard has contributed to numerous websites and publications, including FootballCoin, Play2Earn, BeIN Crypto, Business2Community, NapoliSerieA, Extra Time Talk, Nitrogen Sports, Bavarian FootballWorks, etc. He has written a book about Nirvana, hosts a music podcasts, and writes weekly content about some of the best, new and old, alternative musicians. Eduard also runs and acts as editor-in-chief of the alternative rock music website www.alt77.com. Mr. Banulescu is also a musician, having played and recorded in various bands and as a solo artist.
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