Album Review: Sleeping With Sirens - Feel

Opener and title track Feel gets things off to an impressive start on Sleeping With Sirens' third record. The song provides singer Kellin Quinn with a chance to demonstrate his vocal dexterity by moving between 'full-on' and 'paired back' over and over. Things get even better as you move onto Here We Go. It's a well-done assault on the senses that manages to maintain a strong melody.

Although Feel starts with a successful pair, it comes undone with Free Now. This track sees the lyrics head down that slippery slope of autobiographical and therefore oh-so-meaningful lyrics. While the content is near and dear to the band's heart, it really winds up sounding all too cheesy. Some ground is reclaimed with Alone, or at least that's what it seems like, that is until we hit rapper MGK's contribution to the track. It's hard to appreciate such gems as “Leave me?/How the fuck you gonna leave me?/When I'm the one that's on TV”. It's a contribution that does nothing but detract from the rest of the song and gives off the wrong kind of message – unless they are purposefully stating that they're pathetically insecure. This scribe would dearly like to believe that they aren't doing that. The horrendousness does not stop there, though. Using voice mails on an album is nothing new, however, Congratulations contains arguably one of the dodgiest and, to be frank, condescending (to fans) messages ever included on an album.

The songs on Feel that are good are very good. It's just a pity that the bad aspects of some of the tracks are just too bad to ignore.